


Radio Meteor

by Odamaki



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-08 00:39:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17971154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: Welcome to Radio Meteor, a podcast where I watch an episode of 90's anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it for many reasons. Each week I watch one episode and discuss the characters, language, translation and world building. Welcome to orbit!





	1. Episode 1 - The Shooting Star She Saw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Radio Meteor, a podcast where I watch an episode of 90's anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because I talk faster than I type.  
> In this first episode I ramble about how Gundam Wing sits in comparison to other Gundam series, discuss who the protagonist is anyway and make a few observations on the characters, language and world building. Word of the episode is 'omoshiroi'.

**Episode 1 - Pilot. (Recorded November 2018)**

**[CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO EPISODE ONE](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-1---The-Shooting-Star-She-Saw-e37ngd) **

* * *

**Below is a copy of the transcript of this episode, created by the phenomenal**[ **Noirangetrois,**](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **and punctuated throughout with additional commentary by me in bold and in brackets (Edit: Like this!), plus a few facts that Noir helped me to find.**  

[ **Noirangetrois has also posted a really good commentary of her own here,** ](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/post/182167934032/lemontrash-i-am-excited-and-nervous-to) **which you should definitely read - she makes some great points about Treize, Zechs and Heero, and how they react in different ways to civilians vs. soldiers vs. weapons.**  

**So without further ado, here are The Footnotes.**

* * *

Hey there, and welcome to Radio Meteor. This is a podcast where I watch an episode of 80's ( **Edit: 90’s!)** anime Gundam Wing and I talk about it because I talk faster than I type and I’ve got a bunch of thoughts, just like, A BUNCH. So, I figured, why not share? This episode, if you’ll excuse the pun, is gonna be somewhat of a pilot. It’s a little experimental, and I’m still figuring out how this works.

 

So just to kick things off, let me explain what it is that I’m doing. This podcast will be a mix of banter, observation, general nerdery, and hopefully discussion as well. Consider it a kicking off point for fandom chat, nothing formal, and I’m certainly no expert - so if you’ve got something to say, or an idea, or there’s something you’ve noticed, or I’m just plain wrong, you know, jump in! I’d love to hear from you.

By way of introduction of myself, you may know me from tumblr as [lemontrash](https://lemontrash.tumblr.com/) or [travellemon](http://travellemon.tumblr.com/). Lemontrash is my Gundam specific blog, it’s where I hide all like the deeply nerdy stuff that I do. Travellemon is my main blog and I also go by [Odamaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki), which is my AO3 handle. **(EDIT: the audio podcast is hosted on[Anchor](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash) as well as most other places you can enjoy podcasts, ** **and my Gundam Wing website containing all my fanworks is**[ **Radio Meteor**](https://kaleidoscopemoosec.wixsite.com/radiometeor) **on Wix.)**

Each episode of this podcast will discuss one - count ‘em - ONE episode of the show starting with Episode 1 and finishing, well, wherever we finish up I guess. If you want to watch along as well, and I certainly hope you do, then you know, jump in!

The plan was to use the original 1995 television release version of the show with the Japanese audio and English subtitles, but somehow in my genius I have managed to delete Episode 1 through to Episode 22, so I don’t have those anymore. Instead what I am using is the high definition, slightly prettied up version of the show, but again with Japanese audio and English subtitles, which is available for now on YouTube (keep it secret, keep it safe). **(Edit: I recorded this in November 2018, and since then these have disappeared from Youtube, but may still be out there in the wilds of the internet.)**

I don’t think there’s a huge material difference other than just some slightly nicer animation between the versions that I did have and somehow deleted and this YouTube version, but I think for consistency’s sake, from about Episode 22, I’ll switch over to the old version that I have. Again, I don’t think there’s a huge amount of difference to be honest, but, yeah. If I can get Japanese subtitles, I will, just to kinda look at where the language affects it. I have downloaded the ones that are out there but they don’t sync with the video I have so if anybody technical out there has a bright idea how to get that, please, please get in touch, let me know. **(Edit: I’ve had some advice on this I need to put into practice, but I’ll let you know if I can’t get it to work!)**

So that’s kind of it, that’s the podcast, that’s the premise, I’m Oda and this is Radio Meteor, welcome to orbit.

[musical interlude]

* * *

So here we go. Episode 1, “The Shooting Star She Saw,” or in Japanese, “Shōjo ga Mita Ryūsei.”(少女が見た流星・しょうじょがみたりゅうせい） A bit of a tongue twister in both languages, I have to say. There is honestly a lot to say about the first episode of any series, because it has so much to do in terms of establishing characters, establishing the story, and all that good stuff. I am gonna assume that you have seen the episode this time because most people are fairly familiar with Episode 1 of the show, and skip the recap of the content. It is pretty straightforward. We get an overview that there is an Alliance, the Alliance is bad, there are colonies, the colonies are subjugated, they have launched Gundams, we meet Relena, she’s annoyed at her dad and it ends on that famous party invitation.

So when you really start with dissecting what the hell this is, there’s a lot I could really talk about, but I don’t want to overburden this first episode so I’ll stick some kind of down the line. But first of all, let’s answer the question where Gundam Wing sits in the greater Gundam canon, so to speak.

First, we know that Gundam Wing is the odd one out in the whole of the Gundam universe. It’s very much the alternate universe amongst, well, a bunch of alternate universes. If you’ve ever watched it, it’s not quite as bad as Tenchi Muyo where they just kind of 180 on you and you have no idea that it’s even supposed to be an alternate universe - It has the same characters, it’s VERY confusing, but Gundam Wing is generally considered to be something of a standalone other than, of course, Frozen Teardrop. And I think there might be a few random references to Gundam Wing in some of the later series, but I have to admit it’s something I don’t really know for sure.

In terms of what I know about the wider canon, I have watched Episode 1 of Gundam Unicorn and I have read about half of “Mobile Suit Gundam: The Novel” in translation, which I should add is not the same as the Mobile Suit Gundam the anime, or not quite. They’re both written by the same writer but there’s some fairly substantial differences between the two, both in plot and in the general feel of it. So far, for a grand total of 2 out of 3, the Gundam franchise seems to run on a fairly formulaic approach. You have an teen(™), or a few of them, they find a giant robot in space, and they go to war against oppressors of some sort. There are varying degrees of philosophy about war and the human condition. The flavors vary and they vary in intensity, but the meat is pretty much the same.

So, right off the bat we’ve got a fairly key difference in that we don’t see the origin story of any of the pilots in Gundam Wing. We don’t see them get their Gundams. Most of these other series seem to jump in at the point where they get their Gundam. So, for example, in Mobile Suit Gundam, we have Amuro Ray. He is a civilian, his ship is attacked, he comes across the Gundam and uses it to defend his colony so that they can escape. Or the remnants of his colony, so that they can escape. He’s obviously so good at it, he has natural ability for piloting, so he keeps it, yadda yadda yadda.

In Mobile Suit Gundam the novel, Amuro Ray, is actually part of the sort of Federation military. He is training to be a pilot, and he goes on a mission to move some Gundams from the colony where they’re being tested and stored, the colony gets attacked by what we call Zeon **(Note: Spelling for this varies across versions of MS Gundam; I am using the spellings as provided in the novel translation I own)** , the totalitarian regime that is rebelling against Earth, like a sort of second colony system. They have broken away from Earth and they kind of want to mess shit up. But yeah, Zeon attacks, Amuro stumbles across the Gundam and he basically just co-opts it in order to arm himself and gets into a fight. Then the Federation say, ‘well actually you were good at that, so we’ll keep you on it’. There’s also a lot of discussion about Newtypes, which I’ll come back to, maybe not in this episode but in a later one. 

And then in Gundam Unicorn, they really do pay a lot of homage to that original Mobile Suit Gundam. You have the main character is Banagher, he’s… and I didn’t appreciate this when I watched Episode 1, he’s like a space janitor. It’s very cute. He’s a cadet type student; I don’t really know what he’s doing but he’s learning to pilot really mini, mini mobile suits and clean up space debris. Then his colony gets attacked and his school gets attacked and he finds the experimental Gundam and he… (Spoilers? Kinda?) ...meets the guy who’s been designing it or working on it, and they have a personal connection and the guy, locks the Gundam to him biometrically so it will only function for Banagher.

So there we’ve got this big difference in Gundam Wing. We see them kind of fait accompli. They come fully fledged and trained and they are designed to be Gundam pilots and not much else. This is more like the way that the antagonists are introduced in the other Gundam series. At least, in the one and a half other canons that I’ve seen. Baddies are presented as fully trained pilots, higher up the scale. They’ve got specific roles, they have already developed into those roles and they’re already very familiar with their machines.

You know, they’re already good at what they do, so I think that’s a kind of curious departure that the protagonists are presented as such in Gundam Wing. And I think it’s also worth bearing in mind that it isn’t as clean cut as it appears. We’re presented with these Gundam pilots in Gundam Wing as, they’ve been trained for this, they are ‘The Gundam Pilots’ and they are incredible, and they’ve got these incredible machines, but actually, none of them are really that great at what they do. Particularly if you bear in mind what happens in later episodes.

Then of course, the other obvious difference is that there are five of them. Which brings me onto the next question, which is, who the hell’s the protagonist here? 

[musical interlude]

* * *

Ok, so if we’re asking, who’s the protagonist, you might answer, ‘it’s Heero, duh’. And, you may not be wrong, but at the same time, how much of a protagonist is he? He’s not the first primary character we see. He’s not the first face we see in the series. He doesn’t have much by way of development in the first episode. He’s actually something of a mystery, in fact. I’m not entirely clear if we even learn his name until quite late on in the episode. I didn’t actually check that, I didn’t check at which timestamp we hear his name for the first time. **(Edit: We hear it at 20:34. Thanks, Noir! And wow, that really IS late in the episode!)**

But I think that’s also quite telling because, the other main characters in the other series, we get that straight out of the gate. And even though Heero’s put forward as this kind of unusual and mysterious character, he’s not - his mystery is diluted a bit because we know there’s five of them. It’s not like they’re suddenly surprised, “Oh my god, there’s a second one!” like in Sailor Moon; “Oh my god, there are other Sailor Scouts!”. The characters don’t have that awareness, even though we all do. In Gundam Wing, though it’s not a shock. They know there are five of them, we know there are five of them. So, how unique is Heero, really?

**(EDIT: To expand on this, I appreciate that obviously by later episodes we learn that the pilots don’t know about each other, but certainly in this first episode Zechs at a minimum and the Alliance in general have their suspicions that there are five Gundams. My point here, and which I nearly explained better in the following section, is that this is not a ‘collect ‘em all’ style of anime. It’s not about assembling the team. And when characters do meet, they frequently part again. Except maybe for Quatre, their goal isn’t to form a supergroup of Gundam Pilots, the way that the goal of many other animes targets this coming-together of the main protagonist and their support network of key secondary protagonists. Instead, each pilot operates within his own corner of the narrative, and it’s not even treated by the bigger story a mistake. Again, in other anime the separation of protagonists is often presented as one of the big hurdles they need to overcome in order to achieve the grand goal of the show. In Sailor Moon, there’s a whole season about the conflict of the outer scouts not wanting to work with the main team. In DBZ, there’s whole issues with the scooby gang of secondary characters trying to get back Goku (the hero).**

**Instead we have a much more sweeping narrative of paths crossing and parting, far more in the style of epic novels than hero anime, and it’s worth noting that MS Gundam: The Novel does this too. Different chapters focus on different characters, often at great distance to one another, and who do not necessarily gather in a traditional way (e.g. all arrive at the battlefield for one last big team-up) at the end.)**

So I guess from the perspective of Episode 1, there is a narrative argument that, in fact, the main character (at least for this episode) is Relena. Even if we just look at how the credits and the interstitial snapshot, (that bit that comes up in the middle of the episode where they put the adverts), how she’s presented there, she’s smack bang center for a fair bit of it. Perhaps not so much for the theme tune. She does kind of fill in the traditional, ‘main character, main character, fight scene, and there’s a girl! And then back to main character kind of schtick. You know how anime titles get set up.

But she is the big giant head of that interstitial snapshot, which is often a spot reserved for the principal character, or otherwise the soul of the show. My instinct is to jump to Power Rangers. If you remember snapshots from that, you would have all five power rangers lined up with the red guy in the middle, and then that big giant head guy that gives them their powers is floating in the background behind them. Relena, she is the Big Giant Head. You kind of get that a lot, I think, with these kind of group protagonists kinda shows.

( **Edit: *laughing* so in retrospect, Power Rangers was probably a bad example. At least, I can’t find the image that I remembered anywhere online. However, I stand by the fact that if you’re arranging a group shot of your characters (remembering that this show was intended to sell toys) you still have your row of protagonists with the Number One Protagonist emphasised, then the toys behind or below them, and then if you have background space to fill you throw in either the threat or the soul of the show. Now that might be the enemy they have to defeat looking suitably menacing, or it might be the motivation they have.**

**Edit 2: I’ve just gone to rewatch the Intro, and the first face we see properly in full is Duo’s, followed by Trowa, Quatre and Wufei. Heero stands with his hand over his face for the first 26 seconds _and then never appears again_. We get more shots of the Gundams before it jumps to Relena, and it actually dwells on her for a while. Nice zoom in of her face. More shots of the Gundams (sell those toys!) and then Zechs and Treize are introduced at around the midpoint, a spot typically reserved for introducing the antagonists. More Gundams, Gundams in action! And then it ends. So all we get is literally a half second of Heero’s face unobscured in the opening titles.**

**The interstice gives us a big Wing Zero (sell that toy!) and a flash square which flickers, subliminal message style, with Treize, Zechs, Lady Une, Noin, Sally, Catherine, Dr J, and then finally Relena _in a larger square_. Cue logo, music and then the boys flick up in the foreground, but Heero isn’t emphasised other than being placed in the middle of the line. **

**And of course, Heero isn’t in the Relena-hassles-African-wildlife Outro at all, but we’ll let him off that because anime outro animation often seems to be only tangentially related to the main story, or focussed on a different character.**

[I’ll make a separate post about posters and advertising I think, as there’s a lot to be said about it.)](https://kaleidoscopemoosec.wixsite.com/radiometeor/post/they-re-poster-boys-jim-but-not-as-you-know-em)

But if you think about other narratives, you’re generally introduced to the main protagonist, and then he’s got a bunch of buddy sidekicks, and then there’s a girl. Usually what happens is that the protagonist is so-so relatable, and then something remarkable happens to them, and then they meet their cool destiny. So with Amuro Ray, he’s the main guy, he’s got a bunch of cadet buddy friends, he meets a mysterious girl and then, well, various women actually...floating around him. With Banagher, this is exactly his same story. They meet a mystery, and then something remarkable happens, they get this Gundam, and they realize they’re very good at piloting it, and then that’s like this cool handsome destiny that they’re going to go off with. 

So in that light, in Episode 1, the character that that happens to is not Heero, is it? Heero is the remarkable something. He is the Obi Wan, he is Luna the cat, he is the Edward Cullen, he’s freaking well, he’s not a manic pixie dream girl but he’s a grumpy, murderous dreamboy? He’s a fixer upper- what girl could resist? Not Relena, anyway. But he’s the thing that happens to other people. So, in that respect, is he the protagonist? 

I think it’s also quite interesting that it’s not an ensemble anime, which usually gives you that one, clear protagonist, and then they go kind of questing around to find their allies, because destiny, and it’s very much like, “Okay, these guys are good, they’re important, ‘power of friendship’, but this guy is the ONE.” And when push comes to shove, in every single crunch situation, this guy or gal is that character who is gonna step it up, save everybody else’s ass, and there is kind of no doubt that he or she is 100% necessary. You know, if they die, then we’re fucked. You know, like Sailor Moon cannot function without Sailor Moon, it’s that kind of story.

Whereas, Heero is very, very good, but you kind of get the impression that, if it all went south, if Heero copped it in that first episode, if he punched the button on his spacesuit and actually blew himself to smithereens, and that was it, and they were like, “Well, we’ve got a dead guy on a beach,” the show could go on. It wouldn’t be as good, and the others would certainly have a harder time of things, but it wouldn’t be impossible, so, I think what I’m trying to say is that even from the outset, the show is unusual and complex on a number of levels. And certainly it does seem to make this sort of departure way from these stereotypical first episode rubrics. 

[musical interlude]

* * *

So, I’m just going to round up with a few things that I picked up on as I was rewatching the episode. It’d be great to hear what else you have picked up on, if there’s something that kind of struck you second time round. 

I really love that the first thing you see of life in space is this curved landscape of the inside of a colony. I don’t know if anybody out there has also seen “Interstellar”? It came out, oh, back in 2014 I think. But that image is just so ingrained now into the general kind of visual schemata of colony life in space. I really love that. I’m not saying that Gundam Wing particularly innovated that, or spread it around, but I love that there’s this kind of: 1995, we had that image, 2014, we still kind of have that image of what life could look like in space. I think that’s actually quite a nice little nod.

We often talk about how Gundam Wing is very anachronistic. It looks fricking old fashioned with their floppy disks and big fat monitors. But actually in some ways the science is pretty good, and certainly reading Mobile Suit Gundam, you can see that, despite the fact it’s pilot came out in the 70s, would have been the original series, or early 80s? **(EDIT: According to wikipedia, it piloted in 1979 and finished airing in 1980)** There was also a lot of thought put into what life would be like in future.

Another thing I didn’t really appreciate before is that Heero was heading to Thailand. That completely escaped me. He was off to eastern Eurasia, and they kind of pinpoint Thailand as his target for where he’s going to initially land on Earth. He then ends up into JAP Point Asia Area, so they kind of send him off to Japan, which is where Relena’s at school. Which I found also quite curious, because I just assumed that her school then and the Sanq Kingdom were roughly in the same place, but evidently not.

The next thing I really liked was that when we see Vice Foreign Minister Darlian’s shuttle land, it lands at this space port. I especially love this because I know that Kansai Airport was completed roughly around the same time as they were making Gundam Wing, and it looks similar. If you’re not familiar with Kansai Airport, it is kind of unique. It’s a huge feat of engineering because it’s built on a man-made island and it is very, very eerie when you land. If you don’t like flying, you will not like it because you cannot see the runway as you’re coming down. You’re looking out the window and it looks like the pilot’s gone insane and he’s just gonna plow you into the ocean. So yeah, I really love that there’s this kind of little nod to a sentiment of ‘this is what we’re doing as engineers and as scientists on Earth and this is kind of what the future will look like’.

So just a few points on language that I picked up with the translations. When Zechs is fights Heero for the first time, he refers to it as “omoshiroi,”(おもしろい・面白い） which is translated in the English version, or at least the English subtitles, as “reckless.” “Omoshiroi” is a really complex word in Japanese because it means so many different things depending on the context. It can mean, “that’s interesting,” it can mean, “that’s funny.” **(Edit: It can even mean ‘that’s weird’.** ) So, it’s not a direct translation to reckless. He’s not actually saying that. He’s kind of just like, his interest is peaked in some way, and I think it is because Heero’s being reckless, but that’s not actually what he’s saying. It’s not necessarily a criticism the way that the English presents it.

Relena is pretty formal and polite, as you might expect, so it’s worth running through the different ways you can say “I” in Japanese, because in English we really only have one way to say “I.” I suppose you could say “one” or you could use the royal “we,” but it’s very rare that you meet someone who goes around being like, “Oh yes, one likes this. One does that,” or that uses we on a sort of frequent basis, other than perhaps the Queen herself. 

So you have “watashi,” (私・わたし） which is the standard “I.” “Boku,”（僕・ぼく） which is kind of a more boyish ‘I’; it’s less formal. You will get some younger women using this as well, but it does have that kind of boyish connotation. You have “ore” (俺・おれ), which is much more masculine. It’s definitely one that guys use. It’s not something that you hear a lot of women using. It has the kind of connotation of bigging yourself up, like you think you are THE BUSINESS if you use “ore.” It’s not something that you hear in quite formal situations. So you wouldn’t go into a business meeting introduce yourself using “ore” unless you were the absolute head honcho and you could get away with it because otherwise it would make you look bad.

And interestingly, Wufei uses “ore.” That’s his pronoun, that’s the one he uses to refer to himself. Wufei has an excellent opinion of his own self esteem, and this boy in Episode 1 is not lacking in confidence. And Duo doesn’t use any pronoun. He just says, “kochi wa Duo,” (こっちは） like “this thing/one here is Duo.” He’s just ‘kochi’, which is quite casual. He’s quite slangy, he’s quite fast.

I also thing it’s interesting that when [Relena] pulls Heero’s helmet off, she actually says “Mada kodomo nano ni,” (まだ子供なのに） which, “mada”（まだ） is “still,” “kodomo” （子供・こども）means “child,” so she’s not saying “oh, it’s a boy,” or “it’s just a boy.” She actually says, “oh, he’s a child!” Which I think is kind of an interesting distinction. I used to teach 15-16 year olds in Japan, and okay these were nice kids, they were from nice families, but they would refer to themselves as children. I certainly know that the attitude that I grew up with, あand my peers grew up with, was very much like Ariel in The Little Mermaid when she’s like, “I’m 16, I’m not a child, daddy!”. So I think that’s a sort of interesting cultural difference there when she says, “oh, he’s still a child.”

The last word that’s very similar to “omoshiroi” which is very difficult to translate is “hidoi.”(酷い・ひどい） So Relena says “hidoi” referring to what Heero does at the end. “Hidoi” is kind of like, it’s negative. It can mean “that’s horrible” or “that’s harsh” or “that’s mean.” It can sound really childish or whiny depending on your tone of voice. You can use “hidoi” to mean like a “why are you picking on me?” kind of thing, or you can use it to really express sympathy. It’s a really complex word. And I think it kind of shows something about her character.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that at that stage when Heero rips up that invitation, Relena really, really represents everything he stands against as a Gundam pilot. She is Earth born, she’s rich, she’s the richest girl in school, she comes at him with this presumption that she can know him, that he owes her something, he owes her at least an explanation or his name, and she doesn’t really have a clue at that point. Or at least he thinks that she has no fricking idea. Relena is perhaps a little more clued up than she lets on and I think she does learn quite quickly, as well. She definitely is a figurehead for what the colonies resent about the Alliance and about Earth, even though she’s not OZ with a capital O.

And I think the last thing that I really noticed and I really loved was that at the end, where you get that final little run where they actually introduce the other Gundam pilots. So up till now it’s been Relena’s story, Heero is her mystery who turns up, and then finally at the end we get a little “Hey and how do?” from the others. And I kind of like how they’re introduced because the way they’re attacking really gives you an insight into their personalities. 

So the first thing, we see Gundam Deathscythe, he’s attacking someone from behind, and then he says, “Kochi wa Duo,” and it’s like, “Surprise, motherfucker, here’s Duo!” It’s nice, it’s like that little Jack from ‘The Shining’ moment. And then at Dover, Trowa just walks in and blows shit to hell, he has zero subtlety. He’s just, “I’m gonna walk right in and unload my guns.” And then Quatre’s attack, he’s got this strategy to surround, and then he attempts to negotiate, and when it doesn’t work, he kills them. But that very much shows his style, and I quite like that they’re establishing these very different personalities. And then, obviously Wufei turns up and he’s like, “Ore wa Wufei,” and he just flames everything.

That’s about it, I think, for Episode 1. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found that interesting; I hope it gave you something to think about. If you have comments, questions, suggestions, let me know. I will put a link to where you can find these episodes and how you can contact me. You can obviously always contact me at [lemontrash.tumblr.com](http://lemontrash.tumblr.com/), I’m always there, drop me a message. Tag me on tumblr, I will keep an eye on things. Thank you, and I’ll see you in orbit next time. Bye!

[music]

________


	2. Episode 2 - The Gundam Named Shinigami

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Radio Meteor, a podcast where I watch an episode of 90's anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because who doesn't look at the news these days and not want to fling themselves into the cold void of space.  
> In this episode I ramble about how Heero is funnier than expected, everyone is failing their mission and what the relationship is between Zechs and Treize anyway. Word of the episode is 'kogai'.

  **Episode 2 - Recorded December 2018**

 

[LISTEN TO EPISODE TWO HERE ](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-2---The-Gundam-Named-Shinigami-e37ngp)

 

**Hello friendlies! Here we are again with Radio Meteor Episode Two - The Gundam Called Shinigami.**

**Below you'll find the transcript for the episode, compiled by the very generous** [ **Noirangetrois.** ](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **My additional comments are punctuated throughout in bold and in brackets (EDIT: Like this!)**

**And without further ado, here are: The Footnotes**

* * *

 

Welcome back to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because, frankly, who doesn’t look at the news these days and doesn’t want to fling themselves into the cold fatality of space. I’m Odamaki, welcome to orbit. 

[musical interlude]

Episode 2 - The Gundam Known as Shinigami. “ _Shinigami to Yobareru Gandamu.”(死神と呼ばれるグンダム・しにがみとよばれるグンダム）_ Lots to achieve in a second episode, because you have to continue the plot of the first episode. You have to reestablish your characters - because just because you’ve introduced them doesn’t mean people really know them or necessarily like them yet. So you’ve gotta build on that, and in this case you’re also introducing more stuff, more plot, more world. The second episode is always kind of an expansion package, if you like, on the first one. This is always challenging, and it’s why sequels always are kind of the hit and miss bit of any trilogy.

So, I’m gonna assume that you’ve watched it. Last time I said that I was using the high definition kind of remix of the show on YouTube. In the natural course of things, between me recording that episode and going to record this episode, those videos have been taken down. Not to worry, where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve sourced another version, I think this is now the original 1995 version with Japanese audio and English subtitles. I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you on your own to rummage up where you're going to be able to watch it. Crunchyroll I believe also has it, so have a look there.

So, quick recap of the episode. It’s Relena’s birthday. Hurray! Heero has enrolled at her school, and his Gundam is at the bottom of the ocean. Various factions are vying to pull the damn thing up and we get a little bit of insight as well as to what these others are up to out there in the big wide world. So that’s one thing I’ll talk about a little bit during this episode.

[musical interlude]

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First off let’s kick off with some of the language things that I noticed in this episode. There were quite a number actually. First of all, they have this unnamed character, I don’t know if he has a name. I think he might be called Chris or something horrendous in the English dub **(Edit: Lbro009 found his name for me; it’s ‘Kai’)**. He is the foil to Heero in this kind of Relena… romance? I don’t know if we can really call it a romance. I guess it is. If Heero is like the Edward Cullen as I described him last time; he’s the mysterious thing that happens to Relena, then this guy is, I dunno... I can’t even call him a hot guy. He’s like the standard alternative option at her school. And actually on the surface, this blonde dude is pretty alright as a person. He’s not a bad person. He’s certainly a lot more considerate than Heero is, but I think as I said with Relena before, he represents a lot of the sort of things that are wrong with this universe, in terms of power and privilege and all of that good stuff. 

Heero does not mess around with him when they are fencing. Blonde guy comes in, and he’s like, “I heard you ripped up Relena’s invitation, that’s not cool, aren’t you ashamed of yourself as a gentleman,” and Heero is having none of it. He’s not having any of it. He goes right in, basically nearly stabs the guy in the face. And he comes out with this really quite great sentence, which just really summarizes how sassy Heero is, but also how funny and quick he is. We always think of Duo as the one with being the quick mouth, but Heero really has some good zingers. .

He comes out with this thing that in English is translated as “Oh, you should have told me sooner, I would have given it to you.” And it’s very vague what it is supposed to mean, if it’s the invitation, or I suppose it’s a play on words, like “Yeah, I would give you it, dude” (I’m thumping my fist here). I dunno, Heero’s not that jocky *laughing*. (I’m really revealing more about myself here than this character.)

The key verb that gets used in this exchange in Japanese is “yaburu,” (破る・やぶる）which is “to rip” or “to tear” or “to break.” It is also used in the sense of “to defeat” or “to beat” or “to break through” as in an opponent’s defense. It’s a really good play on words here. What he actually says is, “yaburazu omae ni ageru.”(破らずお前に上げる・やぶらすおまえにあげる） “Yaburazu” (破らず・やぶらず） is “yaburu,” that verb that means “to tear” or “to break” and then that “zu”（ず） ending is a negative, so it’s actually “without verbing,” without doing that action.

“Omae”(お前） is another pronoun, and it is technically incredibly formal, so it’s actually polite. It’s like saying “honorable thing that is before me,” but like with so much of Japanese, it has been distorted over time. 99% of the time that it’s used, it’s rude. It’s so polite, and it’s so used out of context of that politeness. If I just yelled “omae,” it’d be like “hey, you asshole!” But again it really depends on your tone. A lot of Japanese swearing and slang depends on your tone.

( **EDIT: Ok, so caveat and an addition: お前 isn’t always rude, and with the right tone in the right context with the right person, can be friendly with people you know very well. If you’re one of the lads. Your brother, maybe. Or it’s even used as a means of being roughty-toughty and romantic at the same time. At any rate, Heero’s not chatting this fella up, so we can discount these uses of the word here.)**  

And then he says “ni ageru”（にあげる・に上げる） which means, “to give to you.”

That whole phrase together, “Oh if you’d told me sooner I would have given it to you without tearing it,” but it also has that play on words that would mean, “Oh, if you’d told me that you had this sooner, I wouldn’t have kicked your ass.” It’s that kind of really slick kind of thing. He has just beaten thought this guy’s defences, he’s just defeated him at fencing, so I think that really shows some of Heero’s character. He’s witty, and when he wants to be, although he doesn’t say a lot, he’s surprisingly erudite. I think that gets really missed in the general understanding of who Heero is and how he functions. I think that’s a really nice little illustration that there is a lot more to him than meets the eye. Still waters run deep, right?

Another thing that comes up is, when the ship’s captain (I don’t know if he has a name) is talking to Zechs, that’s a really interesting conversation as well in terms of politeness and how polite people are. Zechs tends to use quite polite speech in terms of his grammar and vocabulary choice. He’s not using swear words (or rough langauge) but he’s very dry, he’s very sardonic. He’s rude in the politest, most passive aggressive way that you could possibly imagine. I really quite enjoy hearing Zechs. Zechs is quite classy with how he’s rude, whereas the ship’s captain is just full on.

There’s one translation which is a little bit misleading, perhaps? The ship’s captain refers to Zechs as Treize’s pawn, but the word that he uses for that is “kogai,” (こがい・子飼い） and that doesn’t actually mean pawn. There is a different word that is used for pawn, as in the chess piece, and there’s also another word that’s used to denote a tool that somebody uses for their own purpose, that kind of connotation. “Kogai” actually a little bit more positive than the word “pawn.” You could translate it as “protege,” and there’s also this aspect of raising somebody or something. You might use it in the context of a merchant house - that's how it was traditionally used, or maybe temples, but it doesn’t have a religious connotation. Or if you had a servant or a member of your household who was not part of you family, from the time that they were a child, and you brought them into adulthood or into the role that they were going to play. That’s what that kind of “protege” overlap comes in. It’s got this real connotation as starting from the ground up. You can adopt a pawn who’s anybody, but this “kogai” concept is that you take someone from their first baby step and you really mold them all the way into being their final form, or that’s the idea. I’m not sure Zechs is in his final form, but whatever he is now, there is this consideration amongst his peers that Treize has made him who he is. I think that gives it an interesting layer of meaning, which is missed by just saying, “oh yeah, he’s Treize’s pawn.

I think it’s also really interesting how Relena speaks. I previously mentioned that she’s quite formal, that she uses “watakushi” (わたくし・私） and she calls her dad “otousama” （お父様・おとうさま）which is a very reverential way to address your father. She’s also incredibly formal with her peers, so with the girls who are presented as her friends, she is very detached from them in the way that she speaks. She tends to speak to them very formally. They speak to her very deferentially, they use honorifics to her, and they use humble language about themselves. They really push her up on a pedestal. You get this impression in the Japanese that she is actually quite distanced from these people. She’s feted, she’s privileged, but she’s not buddy-buddy with them. 

One good example of this is when she’s at the party, and she’s about to leave and run off after Heero down to the space port, she says to them something like, “I’m terribly afraid I have to go, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like if everybody just stayed here and continued the party without me.” It’s really hard to translate how polite and formal she is into English very well because we don’t have specific verb forms for this. We just tend to get more long-winded and use more words when we want to be more polite. And then she suddenly turns around when they’re all like, “Oh, if you’re going to the port, let us come too, we could drive you there.” She just turned round and said, “Dame! Konaide chodai!” (だめ！こないでちょだい！・だめ！来ないで頂戴！）This is a REALLY abrupt turn of pace. She really does a flip 180, so you can understand why they’re surprised.

“Dame” （だめ）is literally “no,” but it’s a very particular kind of no. It’s the sort of “no” that I used to use as a teacher a lot with the kids when they were trying to climb on chairs and such. It’s like the “dame” I use to the dog when he’s trying to eat something that he shouldn’t be eating. It obviously covers a lot more situations than that, but that’s how abrupt it is. And that “konaide chodai” (こないでちょうだい） is just super direct. “Konaide chodai” is “don’t come near me!” or “don’t come!” Again, it’s got that real imperative to it. “Chodai”（ちょうだい） is like “for my sake,” like “to give me.” If I say, “coffee chodai,” it’s like “give me coffee!” or “give me some of that!” So that’s a real turnabout with Relena.

Another super interesting thing that she says, because I referred to this also when I talked about Episode 1, is that when she pulls Heero’s helmet off, she says “mada kodomo nano ni,”(まだ子供なのに・まだこどもなのに） which is like, “oh, he’s still just a child.” I picked up on the fact that she uses specifically the word “child.” She doesn’t use “oh, even though he’s young” or he’s “shounen”（少年・しょうねん） as in “he’s a boy” or “teen” as opposed to “he’s an adult.” She specifically calls him a child. Then when she’s having a conversation with her father, he’s about to jolly off for work, and he’s apologizing he’s missing her party. She says, “It’s okay, I know how important your work is,” then “kodomo dewa arimasen,” （子供ではありません・こどもではありません）“I am not a child.” “Kodomo,”　（こども・子供） child, “dewa arimasen,（ではありません）” I am not. I think that is quite interesting, that she considers herself not a child but Heero is a child in her eyes.

Wufei is also referred to as a child, and so is Trowa, but less directly. He says, “fushugi no ko.” （不思議の子・ふしぎのこ）They don’t use the word “kodomo,” they just use the suffix “ko.　（こ・子）” The other option would have been “yatsu,”（やつ） “fushigi na yatsu.” （不思議なやつ・ふしぎなやつ）“Yatsu” just kind of means “guy,” and that has more of an adult connotation, as opposed to “ko,” which links it more to “child.” It’s not directly saying, “he is a child” in the way that Relena and the truck guy refer to Heero and Wufei, respectively.

Relena has this kind of opinion of herself that maybe she’s a little bit more worldly than some of the people around her. I get the impression that she’s actually a little bit jaded. Also I know this episode is called “The Gundam Called Shinigami,” but it’s still quite a lot about Relena and her character arc. She’s starting to question things about her place in this society, who her friends are, what it all means, who Heero is, what’s going on in the wide world. We get at the party these little moments where the scales are starting to drop from her eyes. They’ve probably been dangling on their way out for a while, but she’s starting to really see that shit’s about to go down. 

That translates over into her final conversation with Heero on the boat where he’s loading up the torpedoes. She carries on using this real imperative language. She gets bossy, she gets real Lucy Van Pelt with him. She says, “dame yo!” (だめよ！） as in “don’t do that, Heero!” Again, almost like you’re talking to a child. It could be like that kind of downtalk almost. She also says “hanashi nasai.”　（はなしなさい！・はなしなさい） That “nasai”　（なさい） is absolutely a direct order. It’s not just like saying, “oh, talk with me,” it’s “you need to talk!” Again, nuance. Nuance is everything with Japanese. It’s so, so nuanced, and it doesn’t always translate directly very well. Even just trying to describe what that feels like in a conversation - it would be the kind of thing that my teacher would say to me. She would actually use the opposite, she would say, “Stop talking.”（ **EDIT: which is ‘hanashi shinasai’ if you’re curious. 話ししなさい・はなししなさい）** I think it’s really interesting that Relena weighs in that strong. She’s definitely not the shrinking violet she tries to come across as. 

The last bit of language chitchat I’ve got is how Zechs describes the Gundams. He uses the word “kaibutsu,”　（怪物・かいぶつ） which is described as beasts. We found the “beast” at the bottom of the ocean, referring to Wing Gundam. Then he says, “When we get this machine, we’ll become terrible beasts ourselves.” However, “kaibutsu” isn’t “beasts” as in lions, tigers and bears, oh my. It’s more like monsters, like sphinxes and gorgons. It’s very much more that mythological, dragons and unicorns and beasts of that nature. I think that’s interesting because we start to get these layers of these fairy tale overtones. Relena’s very much like a little miss princess, she refers to Heero as, is he the “Hoshi No Ojisama,” is he the Star Prince. ( **Footnote from Noir: Also as in ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry** ) Zechs is talking about beasts in the ocean.

I even think Duo really plays into that. He comes in as this sort of highwayman, rogue type figure. He’s there to save the damsel in distress, but she doesn’t actually need a knight. The one she wants is the guy who’s obviously the bad guy. I’ll talk about that a little bit more later as well.

[musical interlude]

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Let’s talk about Duo! There’s really not a huge amount to say. Even though this is nominally his episode, or it’s an episode named for his gundam, he doesn’t really get a lot of air time and he doesn’t really do a lot when he does, other than that final scene right at the end. We do get some insight into his character. We know that his tech is pretty damn good; he’s got a thermal blade that works underwater. That shocks the pants off of them. We also find out that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.

It might be worth talking about what some of the others are up to as well, because we get some insight into their actions. We see these snippets right after the Big Giant Head Relena moment, where Trowa is getting himself undercover in the circus. We’re not really sure what his plan is there, but he’s doing something, setting himself up for something. Quatre is having tea and looking at flamingos, so he’s being completely bloody useless in as much as we can understand his mission. Wufei is probably the most organized. He’s just bought a truckload of explosives, which seems to be far more on course for what they’re supposed to be doing than what the others are up to. Heero has well failed here, he’s lost his Gundam and gone back to school.

Then we’ve got Duo, who has apparently just been following random OZ ships around, just to see what they’re up to. He’s kind of like a gremlin at this moment. He just hangs around in the background and just causes them trouble without any particular plan. In this case, he’s followed this ship, he’s noticed that they’re up to something around this military base and around the ocean. They’re clearly doing some kind of operation. But he has no idea what they’re looking for, and he has no idea what he’s going to do. He just hangs around. He certainly had no idea about Heero, either. Then when he does find the Gundam, he’s like, “Oh, cool! Spare parts. I’ll just take that.” He’s like [Burglar Bill,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burglar_Bill) he’s like “Oh, a Gundam, I’ll ‘ave that,” and he just carries on doing his own thing. Which, you know, respect.

Again, in terms of how these characters are presented, we’re given the impression that they’re trained and designed to do this, but they’re really fucking it up already. By Episode 2, they haven’t really managed an awful lot. They’ve done some initial, stomping and blowing stuff up, they’ve put the cat among the pigeons. Now they’ve lost that element of surprise a little bit. So keep trucking, boys!

I do think it’s really interesting that Duo bursts into the scene as the good guy. He definitely sees himself as the protagonist. He is the hero. He’s going to come in - there’s clearly this tool with his silly little shorts pointing a gun at a girl, and Duo is like, “You know what, I’m gonna step in. This guy is evidently a prime bad guy. I’m the good guy.” And then he gets the pants shocked off of him when it turns out that he’s not wanted in that capacity. I think then he starts doing a little bit like, “Wait, hold the phone. If I’m not the good guy, then am I the bad guy?” I don’t think he goes terribly deep at this point, but certainly I think it comes back into his overarching theme and his overarching character arc with how Duo sees himself and whether or not he’s a hero for the colonies. Whether he’s wanted or not. Whether or not he’s doing the right thing. That certainly is a question that they come back to over and over again throughout later episodes in the series. Which we’ll discuss in due course.

That’s really about it for this episode. The one thing that’s not answered, and I would really, really love to know is what happened immediately after that final scene where Heero is just bobbing in the water like a cork and Duo and Relena are just stood there like, “Are you gonna get that?” I just would love that, that’s the missing scene that I want to read if you want to write that. I would love to read it. Just the comedy value. Also the fact that Heero only has the ambulance. He stole it in Episode 1 and then he’s still driving it Episode 2. It’s the most subtle vehicle he could find, or the only vehicle he could find for breaking into a port. Also, let’s just not mention the fucking marshmallow horses with their turkey-drumstick legs 

That’s it for Episode 2. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found it interesting. If you’ve got any comments, suggestions, or just want to tell me I got something wrong, please do drop me a line. I’m always available on [lemontrash.tumblr.com](http://lemontrash.tumblr.com/). Tag me, send me a message, and I’ll see you in orbit next time. Bye! 

[music]


	3. Episode 3 - Five Gundams Confirmed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi there and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90's anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because escaping the pressures of adulthood with childhood nostalgia is gonna be 2019’s biggest mood.  
> This episode, Sally is a little bit creepy, Trowa manages to be both judges and a dork, and we debate if Quatre is a Space Heart or a strategist, or both. Word of the episode is: 'suteki'.

**Episode 3 - Recorded Decemb** **er 2018**

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[LISTEN TO EPISODE THREE HERE](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-3---Five-Gundams-Confirmed-e37nh2)

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**Hello friendlies! Here we have the recap of Radio Meteor Episode Three - Five Gundams Confirmed.**

**Below you'll find the transcript for the episode, compiled by the superlative** [ **Noirangetrois.** ](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **My additional comments are punctuated throughout in bold and in brackets (EDIT: Like this!)**

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Hey there, and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it, because escaping the pressures of adulthood with childhood nostalgia is going to be 2019’s biggest mood. And, you know, I like to set trends. Also, launch of the new drinking game, take a shot every time I say, “I think it’s really interesting that…” Because I noticed that I say that a lot. Let’s get on with it! 

[musical interlude]

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So, Episode 3, Five Gundams Confirmed, or "Gandamu Go Ki Kakunin" (ガンダム5機確認) as they say in Japan. This is a kind of difficult one because it jumps all over the place. You have a sub-plot with Treize and Zechs, a bit of development on what the antagonists are up to, who they are. We find out a little bit more. You’ve got Duo, Heero and Relena doing their thing, and finally you’ve got Quatre and Trowa showing up at the end. So it’s a trio; episode 3 is a trio of subplots.

Let’s kick off with some of the language things, since I always start off with these. Right off the bat, Sally and Duo are really fricking difficult to listen to. They both speak really fast. Duo is not too bad, he’s a little slangy for me. He certainly does that Japanese thing where he kind of shortens words and strings them together, which I appreciate that we do in English as well. But then I’m sitting there wondering, “was that an “i” or a “wa” or quite what the hell were you saying there, dude?”

Following along with our theme of who’s a child and who’s not, the first thing I noticed that Sally said is when she meets Relena, she refers to Heero as a “suteki na kare,” (素敵な彼・すてきなかれ・ステキな彼） which they translate into English as “a cute man.” She’s like, “hey Relena, who is this cute man you’ve brought to the hospital?” And in English it sounds a little bit weird. I always found that a little bit, well, Sally, what are you doing? He’s 15, I don’t think we should be referring to him as a “cute man.” Certainly Relena seems to be suspect of this as well. I always translated her expression in the English version as being essentially, “what the heck, lady?”

But the word she actually uses is “suteki na,” which is an adjective and cute is a bit of a weird translation for that one. I’m sure many people are aware that “kawaii” is “cute” in Japanese, and that’s like the kind of “fluffy” cute. Babies are “kawaii,” anime is “kawaii,” well, some anime is, some anime is not. But puppies are “kawaii.” It’s not the kind of cute 100% in the English way that cutesy stuff is cute, but you know where I’m going with this. “Suteki na” is also not “cute” as in “that guy’s cute, he’s hot.” Not _hot_ hot, but hot diluted. It doesn’t quite mean that either, at least not in the way I’ve come across it being used. Maybe I’m totally wrong, but it’s not the go to English translation that I would use.

“Suteki na” has this quality of something wonderful or something excellent. You could translate it as “perfect.” If you’re talking about a “suteki na” dress, for example or a “suteki na” car, then it’s essentially a kind of object I look at and it makes me want to do the chef kiss, you know when you kiss your fingers and go “Mmm, [kiss sound]. Nice.” It’s that kind of feeling. It’s essentially a feeling of quality, that it’s something that’s well put together. That translates when you’re talked to about people, such as if you talk about “suteki na shoujo,” as in an “amazing woman” or “she’s a woman of excellence.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s especially competent, but there’s just something je ne sais quoi about that person that makes you think, “whatever IT is, she got it.”

I feel like that’s much of what Sally is saying in this situation. It’s a little bit Frankenstein, talking about his monster on the slab, I have to say, because even the hostile situation that he’s come out of, she’s like “what is this perfect specimen you’ve presented to me? I’m thrilled!” Relena quite rightly looks at her like, “what the heck, lady?” First, I don’t think Relena believes that Heero is a totally perfect specimen and also, it’s kind of weird to hear from a lady in uniform.

Carrying on from that, when they’re talking in the lift, Sally refers to Heero as a “shounen,”(少年・しょうねん） as a “young man,” so there’s a sort of disparity as well. We’ve had Relena refer to him as a child and then Sally refers to him as a young man. You never know, by the end of episode 4, maybe he’ll have progressed to actually a man. Godspeed, Heero.

Carrying on as well, talking about how Relena speaks. This conversation she has with Sally is perhaps weirdly the most equal conversation she’s had so far. I talked about how when she talks to her peers, they’re very honorific, they’re very remote. She’s very polite, very stilted. She’s kind of polite to her parents in a sort of, honoring sort of way, but it’s still friendly. Then when she was talking to Heero at the end of episode 2, she was very much little miss bossy boots. Talking to Sally, she’s still pretty bossy, but Sally pretty much gives as good as she takes. She essentially does that Zechs thing where she classes it up a little bit, so that much more mature, better response. She and Relena talk a little bit like sisters. They have that sort of very quick connection where they drop some of the formalized grammar. Relena doesn’t have all the power in that situation. I really like that dynamic, that they really get in there right off the bat.

Finally, in terms of language, the beach scene is quite interesting, because we get some insights into both Duo and Heero’s character. Again I feel like the translations here are perhaps a little bit misleading. In this case, both Duo and Heero use “ore” in this particular scene, and we didn’t hear that when Duo introduced himself, he didn’t use “ore,” and now he is. I guess because they were doing that five-in-a-row **(Edit: four.)** introductions, they didn’t want to have Wufei say, “ore wa Wufei” and then Duo use basically the same sentence.

One really glaring difference in the translation of the subtitles I was looking at is that after Heero lands on the beach, after he’s done his magnificent fall on his face, it’s translated on my copy as, “why did I open my parachute?” But listening to the Japanese, he says “ore wa itai nani o yateiru,” (俺は一体何をやっている？・おれはいったいなにをやっている）like “what the heck am I doing?” or “what the fuck am I doing?” He’s pretty pissed off with himself. He’s not a happy camper that he has failed to kill himself again, and primarily because Relena yelled out basically, “Heero, dame!” again, like “Heero, no!” She said “jump” and he said “how high?” ( **Edit: In fact he didn’t even ask ‘how high’- he just jumped.)** That’s what’s happened there, and he’s kind of annoyed at himself.

Then Duo has his line where he says, “I kind of understand that you want to die, but if you can’t freaking manage it by throwing yourself out from that height, you need to think of a better strategy, dude.” (死にたい気持わかるが、あのたかから死ねないじゃん、も少し死に方考え法が良いぜ）Then he carries on to say something which is translated in the English as, “I’m not saying you have to trust me, but I’m the only friend you’ve got right now.” The word “friend” here kind of makes Duo a lot softer. I think it makes him a little bit more friendly, and it makes him seem like, “we’re on a level here,” as in, “I don’t know you, you don’t really know me, I kind of let you get scooped out of the ocean by the military, sorry for bailing, but I’ve come back to get you out. Trust me here, I’m trying to be your bud, even if you don’t want to trust me.” But what he says in the Japanese is, instead of “I’m the only friend you’ve got,” he says, “ima wa hoka suru dekinai darou.”　（今は他するできないだろう・いまはほかするできないだろう） This means, “right now” (“ima wa・今は・いまは”), “hoka suru,”(他する・ほかする） “another thing you could do. “Hoka” is like another alternative option, “suru” is the verb for “to do,” then “dekinai”（出来ない・できない） as in “you can’t,” and “darou・だろう” as in “right” or “probably.” So essentially what he’s saying here isn’t really “I’m the only friend you’ve got,” it’s more like, “you don’t really have a choice,” so “I’m not asking you to trust me, but I don’t see what else you can do.” I like that it’s a little bit more cynical. It’s not quite a team up, I think is where I’m trying to go with this.

That’s pretty much it on the language front. Not as much as the last one, but again I think there’s some relevant things that show some stuff about the personalities and particularly their relationships between the characters, as well.

[musical interlude]

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Evidently, right after the end of the last episode, Duo bailed. Like, flat out he probably just got out of there, and it was Relena who took Heero to the hospital, or basically dragged him back to that ambulance he left in the corner of the base they were on, and then flagged down some actual ambulance people. We learn a little bit about the technology that’s going on in the present. They talk about having chemical weapons, or truth serum, although Sally obviously has some serious cautions about using that. She is not keen, and I suppose if you relate that back to Episode Zero, as well, she also refused (in that version of this universe), to use biological weapons on Wufei’s colony. She ain’t down with that.

We learn that Wufei is off to attack various supply bases- he’s seriously still a man on a mission. He’s left his truck of explosives somewhere, he’s saving that for the next episode. We do learn that the Shenlong Gundam is slow. I thought that was unexpected, and very interesting. I hadn’t twigged that in my head. Zechs specifically says, “it’s probably not very good at flying.” Here I am going to say that that is interesting, because Wufei is supposed to be the dragon. The one thing I know about dragons is they’re supposed to be able to fly, surely. That’s the two dragon-like things - they breathe fire, they fly, they sit on shit. They’re kinda grumpy, and they eat people. So Wufei is getting only one out of five so far. ( **Edit:Noir correctly pointed out he gets two dragon points. He’s grumpy.)** He’s stomped on some stuff, I don’t think he’s sat on anything. So Wufei is really only getting one out of the five dragon attributes there.

We learn about who the specials are. We start to learn a little bit more about the hierarchy of this opposing force. We know we’ve got the Alliance, who are the overarching antagonists and oppressors, or that’s who was introduced as the overarching antagonists and oppressors. Now, more and more we start to see that there are subdivisions within that. You’ve got the old boys, you’ve got essentially Bonaparte who are incredibly archaic, the man flies a freaking blimp, a zeppelin, which is a damn stupid idea. They’re incredibly arrogant as well 

We see for the second time someone disparaging Zechs pretty much to his face. He’s not popular with the old cohort. He’s certainly of the new breed along with Treize. We learn that within the Alliance, they form part of the group called the Specials, who supply the majority of mobile suits to the Alliance. That is their particular role. They are the hotshot fighters and mobile suit specialists, and they are funded by a third organization, which is Romefeller, which is, well, we’re not quite sure at the moment. They evidently are pretty freaking rich.

Treize is one of them. He’s essentially this nobleman fly guy. He’s got a lot of cash. He said essentially, “I’m going to build these incredible high tech weapons. You’ll buy them from me or else I’ll supply them but I want carte blanche to have my little A-team and do what I want to do. I want to be able to drop in on any battle I want and do whatever I want, and if you just trust me then I’ll get you results.” So far he’s done it, and that’s why they tolerate it, but they don’t like him. We’re kind of getting this slice and dice of who the antagonists are, and I guess that keeps you guessing a bit, doesn’t it? If you’re watching this the first time through.

Lastly we got some insight into Trowa as well. I like that so far every single instance of Trowa on screen is him being kinda snarky and sarcastic. I think his tone here is really good fun. In his introduction in Episode 1, he’s like, “well yeah, I guess you can just call me Trowa, that’ll do.” Then in this episode he turns up and he has been super judgey. He essentially says, “well technically, you’ve done it by the textbook and you’ve made the right choice but you’ve seriously got it wrong because I’m here and you’ve underestimated me.” He’s just incredibly judgey, and incredibly analytical as well. He’s not, well, I think everyone likes to think of Heero and Wufei in particular as being these very robotic, analytical sort of computer-y guys, much more machine-like. But if anything, Trowa’s in there as well so far. If we’re doing the cold and the fuzzy, Heero, Trowa and Wufei are definitely on the cold side. Quatre and Duo get in more on the fuzzy side, although that’s still open for debate as well 

My other favorite thing that Trowa does that shows his personality is that he tests if his mobile suit has run out of bullets or not. He opens up the little chest flaps and spins the dials and nothing happens. Then he tries his gun and nothing happens, and I’m just thinking, surely somewhere in that machine in there you have a little bean counter that tells you if you’ve got any bullets left or not. Maybe not, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s very basic, still running on Windows 95, but I like that little touch. I know it’s primarily just to visually show that he’s run out of bullets, but I still really like it. I like the idea that he’s the kind of person that’s like, “hmm, out of bullets, hmm, well, better just check. No? Oh, no, out of bullets. Darn.”

And certainly that little bit there between Quatre showing up and him running out of bullets, it does kind of show that, again, Trowa doesn’t really have any plan. Again, referring back to Episode Zero, which may or may not have any bearing on this actual series, he just nicked that and ran. The original Trowa Barton gets killed, he picks up the guy’s dead name, picks up the mobile suit, says, “I don’t really agree with your Operation Meteor idea, pal,” and takes himself off to Earth to fight. He’s really gone in to a very hopeless kind of rebellion. He’s just killing time, really, until he loses.

I don’t think Trowa does have a long term strategy, other than to go down, make as much noise as possible, and go out kicking. That’s it, that’s all he’s got. Ditto, Duo perhaps, and ditto, Heero, perhaps. I think the only person who, again, seems to be aggressively strategizing is Wufei. Again, Quatre has got his Maguanacs, and is turning up where he needs to be turning up, but it’s debatable whether or not he’s got any kind of forward plan or long term plan. It could be just that he’s being more cautious. He’s sort of sounding out what’s going on out there, pulling his resources together before he decides on something.

Here’s also where my opinion may differ from some of you guys, and that’s fine. I’m not here to say that this is the correct answer or anything. I’m literally just sitting in my pajamas in a cupboard, so you don’t have to listen to my opinions if you don’t like them. But I think it’s quite popular to have this assumption that Quatre has this sense straightaway that Trowa is his friend and they should be friends and it’s that whole Newtype thing. But I wonder if perhaps that is true. It must be kind of subtle if it is. But on the other level, it is just logic 

( **EDIT: I’m jumping in here to add a little note on what ‘Newtype’ refers to. This is an idea that comes right from the start of Gundam canons in Mobile Suit Gundam. It’s a conceit in the show that living in space will open humanity up to a new level of evolution, physically and mentally. MS Gundam uses it in the novel for easy escape from plot holes. This is not to say it’s a bad concept, but it is a little overplayed in that particular story. Newtypes have a variety of abilities depending on the person and the canon. Generally it falls into the category of heightened perception, extending into an idea of individuals being able to tap into a collective consciousness and become capable of telepathic communication. It has been tentatively ‘confirmed’ by the creators in interviews (albeit feel free to take this with as big a pinch of salt as you so wish) that Quatre, Heero and Wufei have newtype abilities. Quatre, in fanon parlance, is empathic. He’s got this collective consciousness sense of other people’s minds and feelings; Heero is a battle adept, able to read a fight and react faster, and better than others; and in one throwaway comment, Wufei has the skill to instinctively tell good from evil in others. Gundam Wing never outright uses the word ‘newtype’ in as much as I am aware, and it’s not a part of the story the way that it is in other Gundam canons. Still, it’s worth being aware of, as the show does play homage to earlier series and there is this funny little undercurrent of Newtype behaviours, which we’ll pick up as the show progresses. Anyway, back to whether or not Quatre and Trowa are instinctively friends in this episode…)**

Trowa is still fighting, by the time the fight’s over, if that makes sense, and Zechs has played them all. He’s held back and held back with the carrier with the Tallgeese in it. He waits for it all to go quiet, and then he jets off, at which point Quatre goes, “Crap, there was another one?!” He’s distracted, and then Trowa goes, “Ok, I can’t shoot down the vessel. I’ll take my chances and attack the leader.” That’s my take on the thought process, anyway.

Quatre defends himself, attacks back. Then I think it’s just logical for him to have realized that, “hold on, this guy came here to attack the same guys that I came here to attack. This is ridiculous. We clearly have a common enemy. We’ve clearly just ballsed up, because if he hadn’t attacked me then maybe we could have gone after the carrier or something.” At which point I think I personally, if I’d been in that situation I would have said, “Woah, woah, time out. Let’s talk; this is dumb. We shouldn’t be fighting.” I think it’s just more on a strategy level than even on a sentimental level. Yes, that’s probably playing into it too. What do you make of that scene? Dial in, tell me what you think, because I don’t know. I know nothing. I am Jon Snow here. 

Final point for the day, it does feel like this is an episode that’s about working together. Heero is begrudgingly working with Duo. Not that he wants to be, but he is, and it’s putting him back on course. Trowa surrenders and goes, “Oh, whatever. Kill me, whatever. I’ve run out of bullets. Whatever, time to die.” And suddenly he’s met somebody else, who essentially says, “No, maybe there’s another option.” We have Zechs and Treize working together to undermine something, effectively. Also that kind of sweet scene (is it sweet? I dunno), that scene where Otto is about to take himself off to go into battle where he is supposed to be, and Treize quite quickly says “no, I need you to be here. I need you to come and help me.”

Again, we’re getting these little clumps forming of characters working together to do stuff, which is nice. I think we all need someone to go out there and do stuff with, even if it is overthrowing the dominant forces in your life, whatever though may be. Tonight for me it will be, how the hell I get out of my blanket fort, and also not freezing to death because it’s really cold tonight. So that’s it. [sound of sirens in the background] Sorry, Heero just drove past, fucker. Interrupting my podcasting.

That’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found it interesting, and I hope it gave you some food for thought. If you have had any food for thought, please have a chit chat with me. You can always find me at [lemontrash.tumblr.com](http://lemontrash.tumblr.com/). Drop me a message there. I will see you in orbit next time, which I’m looking forward to. I really like episode 4 for a whole host of reasons.

[music]


	4. Episode 4 - The Victoria Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90’s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because the smaller the fandom the nicer the people and this one’s for you. :)  
> This week, we discuss why Wufei is such a butt, the Zech-Char parallel and how many memes you can harvest from one single episode. Word of the episode is 'amai'.

Episode 4 - Recorded December 2018

[LISTEN TO EPISODE FOUR HERE](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-4---The-Victoria-Nightmare-e37nha)

* * *

 

**Hello Friendlies! This week, we look back on Episode 4 - The Victoria Nightmare.**

**Below is a copy of the transcript of this episode, created by the One-of-a-Kind** [ **Noirangetrois,** ](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **and punctuated throughout with additional commentary by me in bold and in brackets (Edit: Like this!), plus a few corrections and additions where applicable.**

* * *

 

# Episode 4

Hey there and welcome back to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it, because the smaller the fandom, the nicer the people. This one’s for you.

Where are we? Episode 4, woo! What a gift. Let’s get into it.

 

[musical interlude]

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So, episode 4, " _Akumu no Bikutoria_ " (悪夢のビクトリア). “The Victoria Nightmare.” My god, what a gift of an episode. There’s just so much in this that’s so iconic and that I love so much. You have Noin flirting with Zechs. You have that terrible nightclub scene. You have Relena standing on a cliff shouting, “Come back and kill me!” You have Wufei shouting at hyenas. You have the duet with the violin and the flute. You have Heero stealing Gundam parts from Duo’s Deathscythe. It’s just so perfect.

I feel like episode 4, episode 5 is where you start to really establish whether or not you’re going to have people carry on watching whatever it is you’re producing. People will watch the first episode to see if they’ll like it. They’ll watch the second episode to see what happens next. Episode 3, 4, 5, that’s where you get that turn off. You need to keep it spicy, and I feel like they delivered. They definitely put some shit in, and narratively it’s very interesting.

Typically I have been talking a lot about translation and Japanese and what it means. Not much of that in this episode, for two reasons. ( **EDIT: This is a LIE and you should learn to ignore me when I say there isn’t much. There’s always plenty)** One, there’s not much that I could pick up on that hasn’t already been picked to death already. There’s that whole conversation that Wufei has with Noin about, “oh, you’re just a woman,” and how poorly that was presented in the English. There’s some hairsplitting to be done there. It’s not that Wufei is perfect, he _is_ kind of an ass. Ok he’s not kind of an ass, he _is_ an ass. He has, shall we say, set a baseline from which he will grow. I think that’s the nicest way we can talk about Wufei here. But other than that there’s not much that was glaringly interesting in this episode.

The other reason I don’t have much to talk about on language is that Noin is freaking impossible to understand anything she says. My god, 50% of her speech, I was craning my ear toward the speaker, just hoping for clarity, but she’s a little bit lispy? Or slurry? I don’t know. I’m not really one to criticize your level of coherence while speaking. I don’t necessarily do that well myself, but _oh_. Noin is just so difficult to listen to. Genuinely a notch harder than Duo, which I didn’t expect to say because I think Duo is pretty damn difficult to listen to.

I think, though, if we have one word for an episode, or one language thing for an episode, for this one the word would be “amai.” （甘い・あまい） “Amai” is another of those really big awkward things to translate into English. We don’t really have a single word in English that really captures the sentiment, the feeling, the nuance of “amai” in Japanese. Taking it at its most basic level, “amai” means “sweet,” as in the flavor. So “amai mono”　（甘い物・あまいもの） would be “sweet things,” it would be candy, cake, all the good stuff. But on another level, “amai” comes up with this other set of meanings that get really convoluted, and hand on heart, I have to say that I don’t fully get it yet. This is something I’ve been learning for ten years and I still can’t really say I fully understand the concept of “amai” as a native Japanese speaker would get it. I’m not sure if it’s cultural exactly, or, well, it is cultural. I don’t know; it’s complicated as fuck. I will do my best to explain.

It has a somewhat negative connotation, I want to say. It also has this association with childhood. We’ve talked before about how the Gundam pilots are specifically perceived as children, and certainly that’s a big part of Noin’s confrontation with Wufei. She’s like, “oh my god! It’s a kid!” Despite the fact that she’s supposed to be 19, she’s barely out of nappies herself. But when you describe a person as “amai,” you can do it very critically, as in they’re completely naive, or that they’ve still got a lot to learn- that they don’t have the experience to really handle or understand a situation. That they’re a little bit childlike. It can mean that they are a little unrealistic in their understanding or their optimism, or something like that. It can also mean that they’re kind of indulgent or lenient, so when you call parents “amai,” they spoil their kids, they don’t really punish them as hard as they perhaps need it. There’s a lack of discipline there.

If you make it a verb, “amakusuru,”(甘くする・あまくする） where “suru”（する） is that ending that often makes things a verb, it means “to go easy on” or “to be soft” about something. You can do that from the other perspective as well. You can combine that to have meanings such as “to take something lightly” or as a lack of seriousness or weight to something, or that you are underestimating something, or making little of something. So that is the kind of context where we hear Wufei criticizing Noin. He says, “onna no ka,”　（女のか・おんなのか） as in, “oh, it’s a woman,” then “dakara amai,”　（だから甘い・だからあまい） so “that’s why you’re…” Well, the English puts it as “weak,” but I think it’s more like, “oh, so that’s why you’ve been going easy on me.” Because he’s very much already declared himself as an enemy. They’ve identified him as an enemy, but Noin doesn’t treat him as an enemy until after she literally sees him in the Gundam, swiping apart two of her soldiers, and kills them.

With that in mind, is he particularly to say, essentially, “you’re going way too easy on me. You’ve made my job way too easy.” Then he also says at the end, “I don’t kill bleeding hearts or women.” I feel like that is a reasonable translation there, but I don’t know if you would necessarily translate “amai” as “weak” in the way that the English criticism of “weak” comes about. What he’s essentially saying is, “you’ve already screwed up enough, to be honest, love.” I feel like Wufei comes with this very hard-to-read philosophy of battle. He has an expectation of what a fight should be like and what an opponent should be like, and if it doesn’t meet that criteria, then it’s not really a battle, and he’s not really facing an enemy. That does tie into his duel with Treize a lot more, where he goes into that and then Treize also lets him off, which then leads into further character development. But we’ll talk about that when that episode comes up.

And Noin forgets she’s got the comms turned on. She yik-yaks, she’s like, “oh my god, you’re a child, you’re barely…” This is the bit I couldn’t really make out. She says something along the lines of “kodomo shounen ne.” If somebody has the Japanese that she actually uses I’d be really interested to see it, because I listened and I listened and I listened and I couldn’t pick it apart. The English translates it as, “he’s practically a baby!” Which I think is perhaps slightly overkill, but I think the sentiment was there. She’s like, “my god, he’s young!”

At any rate, I find it really interesting (hehe, take a shot) that Noin says, or she’s criticized as being “amai,” but she also says about Zechs that, what’s translated in the English as, “oh, hurry up and come here and lean on me” or “rely on me.” She uses the word “amai” there in the Japanese as well. Again, I couldn’t really pick out precisely what she was saying, but she definitely uses the word “amai.” In that respect, that’s almost a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. It comes up in those sort of contexts, as in a “I want a guy who will spoil me a bit, or will look after me” sort of context. Typically, emotionally, but it can be in terms of what you do for them. So if you do his laundry, that would be “amai” to him, because that’s sort of the shit your mum does.

So there’s this funny triangle between various sets of characters with this concept. I think very much the theme of this episode could be boiled down to rational vs emotional. Zechs establishes himself as a very rational guy. He’s very cautious, he gathers data, he doesn’t like rumor, he doesn’t want his enemies to target him and turn up and make him have battles. He doesn’t want his own allies to get the wrong idea about him either. He’s very much Mr. “let me do my job, and leave me alone. Don’t want fame, don’t want fortune, just let me get on with the shit that I need to do.”

Noin is very much more representing something a bit more emotional. She genuinely cares about this that and the other. She’s got her philosophy. She’s got her beliefs. She’s got things that she really loves and that she cares about, which are in conflict with the kind of situation that she lives in. It raises this question of, who would these people be if they weren’t living in the situation they’re living in? Would Noin be a soldier if she wasn’t living in a world at war? If the people she cared about and really loved weren’t so embroiled in it? To be honest I think the answer would be no. Given the chance, she probably would have been somebody quite different. Zechs says, “a year and 22 days ago,” (which is how long since they’ve met) “You used to hate war and now you seem really gung ho about it.” But I think we can attribute that to the fact that she’s into him.

Noin really bothers me with her characterization. This need to be second best, not because she’s incapable, but because she wants to put other people ahead of her. She kind of does that the whole series through. She’s like Little Miss Wingman. She’s got your back, but at times she’s the kind of person where I’m like, “I love how you support me, thank you so much, you do so much that’s so good”, but I equally want to kick her ass and say, “Fight for yourself a little bit more!” Maybe that’s just me.

So as I said we get this sort of contrast the whole way through this episode between rational and emotional. So, Zechs and Noin, but then equally Noin versus Wufei, he’s very much more this sort of rational, hard-nosed soldier, even though he’s younger. Then equally on the flipside, we have Duo versus Heero. This is like the diet version of the theme, I think. Heero’s very much more like, “don’t touch my stuff, I’m gonna do the mission.” Clearly enjoys it because he laughs his head off. And then we jump over, just so they don’t feel left out, to Quatre and Trowa doing their violin and flute duet. I love how pissed off Trowa is about this. Nobody has forced him to do this, but he looks so annoyed playing his flute. I think in that situation, again, Quatre is the emotional and Trowa represents the rational. That I think is highly arguable. I’m not sure Trowa is as rational as he says, but he is very analytical, as I said in Episode 3. And he’s very judgy.

So we’re getting this theme again. I suppose it comes back to that previous thing they brought up, which is man versus machine, in addition to emotion versus logic. They go hard on that. They’re carrying that forward. I also forgot to mention, Treize and his popcorn bath is in this episode.

Like I said, this episode is just a massive fucking gift.

[musical interlude]

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I suppose the last thing I want to talk about in this episode is that – and I remember distinctly when I watched this as a kid (I say kid. Teenager.), being kind of confused as to who I was supposed to be rooting for. In part that was because I hadn’t watched much nuanced story telling in cartoons before. There was a rut at the time in storytelling in animation that very much told you, “This is the bad guy. We don’t like them. This is the good guy. Big thumbs up.” There was no questioning that. You never questioned whether or not you should like the bad guy, or whether the good guys were right in what they were doing.

I feel this episode, even though it’s the one where Wufei is introduced properly, it does it very, very unsympathetically. He’s very much set up as the character that they’re using to suggest or imply that maybe the Gundams aren’t heroes, or that maybe they’re gonna get shit wrong, and we know they do, in future. He’s got quite a creepy introduction, actually. He doesn’t say anything for most of the episode. Then he’s just kind of mean. There’s not a lot to like about him. Whereas we get more of a mystery character with Heero, we get the cute guy with Quatre, we get the funny guy with Duo. Trowa is, well, I guess he’s just Trowa, isn’t he? There’s something gonna go on there. Then he gets put in with Quatre quite quickly, so a “good guy” by association.

But Wufei is very much on his own, and he’s very much a butt. I think it’s reasonable that he ends up kind of unpopular. Plus, this episode plays heavily on sympathy for the enemy. It’s very much more an episode about Zechs and Noin, and we get a little bit more insight into them. That Zechs perhaps isn’t all that he appears and that he’s not particularly thrilled with the Alliance. The Alliance is essentially the mustachio-twisting villains of the show. They are not good guys; we are not supposed to like them. And we’re not supposed to agree with them, and we don’t, and it’s easy not to.

We know that Zechs is working to undermine that, him and Treize together. We’re pretty sure Treize is an enemy, but there’s this question mark over where Zechs and Noin fit into this complicated puzzle. If I’d been asked where i thought this was going, I could quite easily say, “I think these are the characters who are going to default over and be on the good side.” Particularly Noin. Zechs perhaps not so much, but again, good guy by association. If Noin comes over to the good side, maybe that’s where it’s going.

We also learn that the Alliance is pretty damn sloppy. They have this base with crap security; they make these pretty poor assumptions based out of arrogance about their own safety, and evidently, that’s a mistake.

I think I’m going to leave it there. Other people have discussed whether or not Wufei is as misogynistic as he implies, quite what he means when he calls Noin weak. I think that’s been discussed a lot on other places. I think I’m going to leave Relena’s “come back and kill me” comment as well; I think that’s something else that’s been discussed heavily. We may touch on this in future episodes.

So that’s my take on Episode 4. Love it! Freaking legendary. It’s got so much in it that, as I said, it’s just iconic, and memeable, and that I love. I hope you all have a lovely evening, or morning, wherever you are, and that one day in your life, you get to have a popcorn bath, if you’re into that.

At any rate, this has been Radio Meteor. It’s been great. Thanks for listening to me, and I hope to see you in orbit next time.

[music]


	5. Episode 5 - Relena's Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90’s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because over-thinking hastily slapped together children's television is my jam.  
> This week, we discuss the contradictions of Relena, how Heero is objectified by basically everyone, and the idea of Earth Humbling. Word of the episode is 'aitsu'

**Episode 5 - Recorded January 2019**

****

[LISTEN TO EPISODE FIVE HERE](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-5---Relenas-Secret-e37nhd)

* * *

 

**Hello Friendlies! This week, we look back on Episode 5 - Relena's Secret.**

**Below is a copy of the transcript of this episode, created by the highly deductive** [ **Noirangetrois,** ](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **and punctuated throughout with additional commentary by me in bold and in brackets (Edit: Like this!), plus a few corrections and additions where applicable.**

* * *

 

# Episode 5

Hey there and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because overthinking hastily-slapped-together children’s television is my jam. This week, Episode 5, Relena’s Secret, " _Rirīna no Himitsu_ " (リリーナの秘密). Welcome to orbit.

[musical interlude]

* * *

Hey, you made it! Episode 5. It’s going well, I feel. As best as it could be. Let’s start off with an overview of this episode, because this one has a lot in it. The episode opens with Relena and her dad going back into space (I assume they’re heading to L1; it’s not necessarily specified) following, obviously, the news that there are Gundams who are rumored to have been sent by the colonies. Whether or not Vice Foreign Minister Darlian is fully aware of the truth is still open for debate. They are accompanied by Lady Une, who is obviously an OZ agent. He goes to his meeting. Lady Une has at the end of the last episode received what she believes to be orders direct for Treize in his popcorn bath to do something about the problem, and boy, she does.

We hop around a bit in this episode. Vice Foreign Minister Darlian cops it, we find out Relena’s secret, cue title. We get that continuation of what the others are doing as well. We check in with Quatre and Trowa, who had in the last episode met up and were staying at one of Quatre’s bases. We check in with Wufei, who’s still doing his own thing, very much following his mission. We check in with Heero, who has taken off in Wing Zero ( **EDIT: Noir just informed me that it’s not ‘Wing Zero’ yet. Actually, I’m not sure that ANY of the Gundams have been named yet on screen? Have they? D: I’m honestly thrown for a loop! It’s just ‘Gundam Zero’ at this point, right?)** having stolen parts from Duo and kind of given him a bad day. We obviously check in with Duo as well, who has now got a defunct Gundam. He’s busy trying to repair it before he gets his next mission.

At the end of the episode, Relena meets Dr. J. That’s one of the big scenes of this episode. They have a discussion about Heero, about what’s going on, and then at the end, Relena returns to Earth. So that’s what’s happening in this episode. The plot in terms of the grander scheme of things doesn’t go very far, but we do get some backstory, and we can see that everyone is busy regrouping, reorganizing, starting to put the pedal to the metal.

This is probably one that you might want to rewatch before following on too much more with this episode of the podcast, just to remind yourself if you’ve forgotten (which I do not blame you, because I remembered hardly any of this) exactly what goes on in this episode. If you’re going to do that, do it now.

[musical interlude]

* * *

 

Alright, you back? We good? A few things on language. We have the recap at the beginning with Relena’s “Heero, come and kill me.” I didn’t talk about this in the last episode. I glossed over it because there was enough to talk about on other things, but I did notice, the word she used, she said, “hayaku, watakushi wo koroshi ni irrashai.” (早く私に殺しにいっらしゃい・はやくわたくしにころしにいっらしゃい） We’ve discussed before how, every other time she’s spoken to Heero, she’s very direct, very bossy. Here we get this switch back to a not-super-formal level of politeness that she has used with other things, but an almost ironic level of politeness. She defaults back to “watakushi,” that more polite form of “watashi” or “I,” and then we have this verb at the end, “irashai.” This is the casual form of a very formal verb that is used frequently in generally informal contexts. I know, language is a mess.

“Irashai” is from the verb, “irrashaimasu,”(いっらしゃいます） which is an honorific for “to come” or “to go.” You also hear this every time you walk into a convenience store. Some poor teen wedged behind the counter will say, “irrashaimase,” because its 3 am and you’ve turned up to buy a roll of toilet paper and some wasabi, because that is the whole point of a convenience store, it allows you to do that and to make those life choices. (I absolutely did that once to confuse a convenience store clerk.) ( **EDIT: we had an ongoing rivalry where he would constantly give me either cutlery I did not need, or the wrong cutlery. He did not know what to do with that particular combination of purchases, let me tell you.)**

So she dropped the “masu” ending from the verb, which makes it standardly polite, I guess. Anyway, this is a very long-winded way to say that this is the first time she’s used any kind of her standard polite phrasing directed to Heero, and he’s not even there to enjoy it. I’m going to come back to talk about Relena quite a bit in this episode because, first, the episode is quite a bit about her, but we also get some really interesting insights into her character.

Again, talking about language, we talked about Relena and how she talks to her peers. She’s very detached, very formal. We actually get to hear them talk to each other without her present, and they’re much, much less formal. They’re still polite in that “all girls school” formal “gokigenyou” kind of way, but they’re using a much more standard form of politeness rather than this almost archaic politeness, this overblown politeness as you might say. ( **EDIT: I goofed. Sometimes talking about Japanese I forget to translate shit. ごきげんよう gokigenyou is analogous with ‘good day’ in English, and acts as both a greeting and a farewell. It’s old-fashioned and the stereotype is that it’s used by Posh Girls at Expensive Girl’s Private Schools, including the prestigious St. Joseph’s Girls School.** ) There’s one more language point regarding Relena, which I will come back to when we discuss her character, because I think it’s such a good illustration of who she is at this stage of the game.

The last thing about language that I’m going to talk about is how Relena and Dr. J respectively talk about Heero. Up till now, we’ve had Relena describe Heero as a child; that “kodomo” word. Then he’s been described respectively as a “shounen” by Sally, and I can’t really remember how Duo addresses him. I think he just kind of skips that and, well, whatever. But here, Relena refers to him as “Heero-kun.” “Kun” (くん） is that suffix/ending that is exclusively used for young boys, and perhaps boys of your own age in your class. You might use it to talk about adult men, if you know them _well_. I might talk about a guy I went to school with as “Heero-kun.” It expresses a sense of familiarity, so in front of Dr. J, she’s sort of claiming a little bit of ownership.

She’s using his first name right off the bat, which isn’t typical in Japanese. Usually, there’s a bit of a big deal about being invited to do that. Although having said that, in a modern context, a lot of people do just skip to that. It might be that they’ve done this, the way that she’s referred to as Relena pretty much exclusively, to demonstrate a more global attitude within the canon. But she only calls him “Heero-kun” once. She very quickly drops it and goes back to calling him Heero with no honorific whatsoever.

Dr. J doesn’t even bother to use his name. He refers to Heero as “yatsu,” (やつ） which I mentioned before. It’s that slangy kind of way to say “guy.” He also uses “aistu,”（あいつ） which is another way to talk about a person but also a thing, and again it’s relatively casual. This dude’s language is really interesting. He does not talk like you would expect a scientist to talk. He’s kind of “cowabunga,” if you know what I’m saying. He also refers to Heero, when Relena asks Dr. J, “what are you doing? What’s your connection to Heero? Who is he to you?” kind of thing, he says “aitsu wa,” that this guy, this person is our agent. That’s how it’s translated in the English subtitles.

The word he uses is really curious to me because he says “dairisha.”　（代理者・だいりしゃ） I had real trouble with this one because I’ve come across the word “dairi” （代理・だいり）before, but not in a context even remotely resembling this. I’ve come across it in terms of an agent, specifically, a travel agent. So you have the “Ryoukou Dairiten”　（旅行代理店・りょこうだいりてん） is the travel agency building. Then it’s typically “dairinin”　（代理人・だいりにん） not “dairisha.” It’s a different character (kanji). It still kind of denotes the same thing, but it’s just a weird ending. It’s not a typical conjunction of characters (kanji) here. And crucially, it also doesn’t mean secret agent. Throw that idea out.

**(Edit: In fact, I want to go so far as to throw in the dictionary listing for this word and the contexts that it IS used in, because it’s so different to how an English speaker would approach the word ‘agent’ used in the scenario of a soldier or a rebellion as is the case with Heero:**  

 

 

  **So in fact it feels to me like J is putting a gloss of legitimacy over his (unnamed) organisation and his use of Heero.)**

That’s ( **secret agent)** not what it means whatsoever, because there’s very different words for a spy or a secret agent, which I did have to look up because I’d forgotten what they were. You’ve got “kancho,” (間諜・かんちょう） **(Edit: Fun fact, this word is also a homonym for the word 浣腸　which means ‘enema’.)** you have “kensha,” (間者・けんしゃ） and you have “ｍawashimono.” （回し者・まわしもの）（ **Edit: I think I said ‘warashimono’ on the recording which is (a) nonsense or (b) ‘straw thing’. Neither is what I wanted to say.)** So I’m not quite sure what they were aiming for with this, whether it’s just a rare word that my experience hasn’t really come up with much. Or they invented this to show a kind of uniqueness to the situation. It remains to be seen. Not sure. I will keep my ears peeled, so to speak, to see if it’s ever used again.

There is one last thing. J reveals the presence of OZ to Relena, so she’s heard about it once from her dad. Then J reiterates that OZ exists, they’re a real thing, a real deal, and that’s who they’re opposing. She asks who OZ are, what’s the deal there, and J refers to them as “akumayatsu.” (悪魔やつ・あくまやつ）Now “akuma”　（悪魔・あくま） is best or most easily translated as “devil” or “demon,” as a thing from hell, so I think that’s another reflection on this fairytale type overview that’s been going on. We heard “kaibutsu,” Zechs talking about monsters, we’ve had princes, and now we’ve got devils. So, themes carry on.

[musical interlude]

* * *

 

Let’s talk now a little bit about the world that we’re exploring. For the first part of this episode, we get to travel with Relena and her dad into the colonies, and we get to see the colonies through their eyes. What is this place? We know that it’s rare for people from Earth to travel to the colonies. We know that travel from the colonies to Earth and between the colonies is rare. ( **Edite: so rare and expensive, in fact that the representative of the colony Mr. Darlien meets comments about how they’ve been flying back and forth with relative frequency. He’s pretty snide about it too.** We also have (do we have it or have I just picked this up from Frozen Teardrop?) communications are pretty slim as well.

One thing I really noticed (and this is a complete aside) in the introduction is that we have these donut-shaped colonies out there. So when it’s doing it’s “The year is After Colony 195…” bit, we get a nice image of a ring-shaped colony. That put a little ding in my head of, “oh! The international space station!” When did that happen? Where does this image come from? I talked about the curving inside of a colony before in episode 1. So, the International Space Station launched in 1998, a couple years after Gundam Wing was finished. Prior to that, we’d have a couple of Russian space stations. You’ll have to forgive me if you already know all of this, I am super ignorant about astronomy and space travel. It’s something I’m exploring as I go along, I’m learning as well. But none of them were circular or ring-shaped. They were all tube shaped, for the most part. All of our actual space station are tube shaped.

This concept came out of a mathematical theory in the 1950s by a man named von Braun, and it’s based on artificial gravity. If you have a ring that spins, you can create gravity. I assume it’s something very complicated to do with physics and centrifugal forces. We do see this in other media of the time. It pops up in 1968’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which obviously predates Gundam, pretty much in its entirety I think. So yes, Gundam Wing is fairly anachronistic, for example, pay phones. It still has the little nod to what could be done. The whole reason apparently that the International Space Station isn’t donut shaped and has artificial gravity is because apparently the scientific worth of testing stuff in microgravity or zero gravity is quite a bit better, and also the cost of creating one of these things is just astronomical (excuse the pun) and nobody can really afford it at the moment.

Although, that might change. NASA has been talking about doing a little module that spins. It’s not donut shaped, I don’t think, but they might be trying to do that to see then how that works. Also, if you’ve been reading your science things, you also know about how reproduction in space is difficult because of the lack of gravity. They’re talking about doing this with sleeping quarters or living quarters, so I wonder what experiments they’re going to do up there. Hmm? ([ **Edit: If you’d like to know more about space stations in real life and the design/set up of space habitations in the show, be sure to check out Amyoles excellent write up on this blog here**](https://kaleidoscopemoosec.wixsite.com/radiometeor/post/life-in-space-and-real-world-space-habitats) **.)**

Other things. Just the fact that Relena is going back into space _again_ , it’s the second time in as many weeks, and we already know it’s incredibly rare for this travel to happen at all. I think it’s very telling that her father has this little snit with Lady Une on the shuttle, and immediately turns to Relena and directs her out the window and says, “Make sure you remember this. Look at the Earth and remember how beautiful it is.” It just made me think of something I read regarding experiences of astronauts who had been out of the atmosphere and seeing the Earth in its entirety for the first time.

I can’t remember the specific name of the phenomenon. I’m just going to call it “Earth humbling.” It’s this change of perspective, once you get out of orbit and look back at the Earth and realize that _that_ is it, that is the entirety of humanity. That’s where we came from, that’s everything we have. It makes you feel incredibly small, but also it gives this new sense of value to life. I can’t remember the exact quote again, but one of them, I think it was Tim Peake, said he wished everybody could have that experience because it just made you realize that we are one species rather than, you know, we shouldn’t be having wars, we shouldn’t be fighting. That really pinged into my head.

It just made me think as well, that you have these colonists who have been living in space for such a long, long time that they have very likely lost that sense, that perspective. The Earth is no longer a thing of value – it’s become “the other,” it is the “them” in the phrase “them and us.” You get this conflict. And likewise, the people of Earth don’t have this perspective that life is so fragile, so important. That we only really have this one ball of dirt, and that’s phenomenal. The chances of life existing. They don’t have that “Earth humbling” anymore. So we get this sense that there’s this dissonance between people who live on Earth and people who live in space. That’s what sprang into my head.

We get, as I said before, that there’s a couple of contradictory perceptions of the colonies. Relena describes them with this awe. People on Earth are like, “Ahh, space sounds amazing.” She talks about the colonies being kind and courteous and safe. She specifically says, “Oh it’s much safer here than on Earth.” I always get the impression that what she’s jaded with is life on Earth. She’s put life in space up on a pedestal, and of course she’s very, very quickly proved wrong. Space is as dangerous, because people are people wherever they are.

We also get this impression that communication is bad between Earth and the colonies. As soon as the Minister arrives, he has a conversation with a couple of people of the colonies. They’re talking about Earth’s chronic financial crisis. It’s purely an irony, it must be, because everyone we’ve seen on Earth so far has been stinking rich. They’ve got Relena’s whole private school. We haven’t seen any suffering, exactly. At least not yet. That’s all to come. And I think this is really curious as well, because again, if I refer back to Frozen Teardrop (I think), it talks about how the colonies are very deeply misled economically by Earth. So the whole reason L2 goes to shit is that they’ve been forced to pay for the creation of [Space Fortress] Barge? Some massive spaceship. They basically got bankrolled, then promptly went bankrupt. So we have this impression that the colonies are more economically fragile. They have wealth, but they can’t really apply it efficiently, and they’re being told that “oh, Earth needs your money.” But as we’ve seen, there are a lot of people on Earth who aren’t particularly hurting for cash. We’ve got the whole of Romefeller, for example. ( **Edit: Who I THINK have been name dropped earlier in the show when Treize was introduced.)**

This is followed through as well, I think, in how we get a real chance to see the colony as well. There’s definitely a difference in how it’s portrayed. It’s big, for starters. These are not small settlements in space. They talked about colonies, and we tend to get this little ping in our heads ( **Edit: honestly, new drinking game. Take a shot every time I imply my head makes a noise like a microwave oven)** that a colony is a little pioneer thing. It’s a wee thing going off into the wilds. You know, those little frontier town sort of images pop up. But these are big cities, effectively. We get a real impact of the sheer mass and the sheer size of everything in the colonies. There’re skyscrapers in there. They’re got highways and big parks and such. It’s no small potatoes.

The other thing that pinged up on my radar is that the architecture is strikingly different. It’s very utilitarian, it’s quite sparse. It’s not as modern looking. The skyscrapers of the colonies kind of look like 1960s concrete crap. There’s none of this old world heritage. There’s not much beauty, it has to be said, in colony architecture.

We also get this, as we had the signs that there was fractures amongst the antagonists, amongst the Alliance, we also get these signs that there are fractures amongst the factions of the colonies. This isn’t discussed in as much detail, but we this one guy turn to Vice Minister Darlian, and he’s like, “Why does the Alliance find it so hard to trust us?” And he kind of eyeballs him. I can’t decide whether or not he was judging. I feel like he was.

We do get the guys turn up to fetch the bodies, effectively, after the explosion. Again, it’s not clear who they are. They might have been ex-Sanc citizens, secret service, they might just be the kind of rebels who are working with Dr. J, or maybe he fell in with the Sanc Secret Service, or whatever. ( **Edit: Noir presents an interesting alternative as she thought they were with Une. Has to also be mentioned that I don’t think Sanc has been named so far. Also we’re going to use the spelling ‘Sanc’ because we have to pick one and might as well, eh?)** They’re not part of the main colony hierarchy, I suppose we could say. They’re not part of the people having the main discussions with the Alliance. We’ve got already these sub-branches. We have the Alliance who talk to the colonies, except there’s these secondary groups swimming under the surface, muddying the waters.

That’s some of the things I’ve observed about the world and the world building. We have a little bit more insight. We’ve expanded our horizons. With that, we get a few insights about the characters as well.

[musical interlude]

* * *

 

Starting off with the quick bits, we have a nice little check in with Trowa and Quatre. I think an award needs to be given to Trowa for being the most realistic teenager in this. Oh my god, he is such a moody shit. He did the duet last episode. He was mad about that. He’s still mad. He’s just sulking off into the distance. I assume he got orders to go and do some stuff as a Gundam pilot. ( **Edit: Noir also raised an excellent point in that we have NO IDEA who the orders are coming from. I assumed the scientists, but it’s not explicitly stated in the show.)** Meanwhile, Rashid talks to Quatre. He essentially says, “Maybe we shouldn’t let him go, he might come back and attack.” Quatre’s just like, “Oh I wish he would, and I can see him again.” Say what you like, you can try and convince me that this boy is cotton candy, and I will just, no. I just can’t buy it. Look at his face as he says, “then I could see him again.” He’s a little shit. He knows what he said. He’s devious. ( **Edit: or if you so headcanon, thirsty for tall boys).** Trowa’s probably out of there like, “this boy’s trouble.” Make of that what you will.

Another observation. I think Duo’s got cash. We see Howard chilling out on his entire floating dock. It’s got at least 2 superyacht cranes on it. I don’t know if he owns that or he’s just borrowing it, but that is not an insignificant piece of kit. Howard’s like, “Yeah, cool dude, you can be here and I’ll repair your Gundam as much as you’d like, as long as you pay me.” He could just be ribbing Duo, but it does throw up the option there that Duo’s waving around mad cash. And he could be. He could be.

We get a little check in with Noin and Zechs as well, so we know they’re still alive. They’re still doing stuff with the Tallgeese. And we have this little bit where Zechs is watching the news, and he’s watching Lady Une basically lie her face off in front of all these press cameras and threaten the colonies. There’s this sort of “I know that you know that I know” kind of situation going on. Noin knows that Zechs is worried and he won’t acknowledge it, no more than he’ll acknowledge that she knows who he really is. She knows Relena is his sister. ( **Edit: Noir is on FIRE today. Another excellent shout out that first time viewers don’t know this at this point. There’s maybe been a mention of a connection between Relena and Zechs but nothing concrete. However, as a second time through viewer, I think Noin definitely knows.)** There’s this question mark over Zechs. What the hell is he doing? Why is he hanging out with these guys? What’s his game? Is he really evil or not?

I talked about how other Gundam series pay homage the original Mobile Suit Gundam series and I feel like that is where Zechs comes in. I think he is a redux of the character Char Aznable. “Shar” I think is how it’s pronounced. Char Aznable is in the original series. Again, I’ve only read the novel, which I appreciate is different from the anime. He is a nobleman who the enemy, originally to get revenge, and then gets sucked in for quite a long time. He is _the_ antagonist, and then he kind of loses sight of his mission, and then stuff happens. Huge similarities. ( **Edit: Keep your eyes peeled for another guest blog to come discussing this very topic, which I am hugely excited for.)**

Coming back to the main characters, Relena gets pretty complicated this episode. Previously we’ve had her set of as this symbol of what life on Earth is like. It’s relatively wealthy. She’s in a cushy position, but she’s not content. She doesn’t connect well with the world that she lives in. This episode is very much about her conflict with two very different parts of herself. She starts off the episode jabbering on about how the colonies are so great because they’re so peaceful. Peace is great, safety’s great, yadda yadda yadda. But then as soon as violence actually happens to Relena, she gets violent.

Her first instinct after her father is killed is that she jumps straight to revenge. She says, “OZ did this didn’t they. I’ll kill them.” She steals the gun and starts waving that around. And then she has a flashback to Heero threatening to kill her, and talking to her father. I think it’s very key that she jumps to the phrase where she says, “I’m not a child.” From my perspective, I feel like what’s happening here is that she is jumping to Heero’s decisiveness more than anything. He acts. He kills to defeat his enemies. And she realizes that when she called him a child, I think she’s realizing the depths of how much she doesn’t know, how much she condescended to him, and that he really has experience and capabilities that, at the moment, she sorely lacks.

She’s wavering between being quite childlike. She sits very passively as the just inject her with some stuff. When they pounce on her to get the gun off of her, she says, “hanashite kudasai!” (離して下さい・はなしてください！）“Hanashite”（離して・はなして） is ”let go of me”, and then “kudasai” is please, so it’s the one thing that really sums her up at the moment. She’s fighting, but she can’t quite break out of the mold that she’s been put into throughout her childhood. She’s very contrary. She’s pulled in two different directions. She goes straight to, “I’m going to kill them all! I’m going to get my revenge!” to “Killing can’t possibly end in peace” when she’s talking to Dr. J. She has these little moments where she acts quite childlike and quite naive, and then equally quite jaded.

By the end of the episode, Relena hasn’t fully resolved this. She’s come to the conclusion that she doesn’t like exactly what Dr. J is doing, perhaps because she has empathized with Heero to such and extent that she feels that what Dr. J is doing is wrong. But she hasn’t really settled within herself quite what’s going on. Other than that, at the end of the day, she did love her adopted father and whatever her biological truth is, because she’s found out that she is the heir to this peace philosophy, but she’s not ready to apply that to herself just yet. She does say at the end of it, “I will always be your daughter.” She is taking on the Darlian identity. She goes back to that, probably as a bit of a safe space after what has to have been a pretty shit day. Let’s give her some credit. The girl’s been through the ringer here.

Really the last thing that this episode gives us is some insight into Heero. We know that he’s effectively a tool. Dr. J certainly talks about him like he’s something owned. He’s not referred to by name. There’s a sort of deep familiarity but not necessarily a niceness there, I suppose we could say. And there’s this thing that Heero’s kind hearted but he’s dedicated to the mission. He will do whatever needs to be done - and this is foreshadowing of what we know is going to come up in a few episodes’ time. We learn that he doesn’t even have his own name. Heero Yuy is a codename. We see him as well fighting and enjoying it. He has a bit of a chuckle as he’s blowing shit up.

Finally we get this little showdown between Heero and Duo. Again, it’s often underappreciated how funny Heero is. He and Duo turn up at the same base. Duo starts giving him shit for stealing his Gundam parts - which didn’t really appear to give Heero much of an advantage. They both turn up at the same mission on the same day, so either Howard really pulled all the stops out or Heero just is that inefficient. ( **EDIT: OK so Heero COULD have gone on some other mission in the interim but honestly, this version of events is funnier so this the headcanon I’m adopting.)** They start squaring up to have a barney ( **Edit: ‘a fight** ’ **for those not familiar with British slang.** ). We see Heero target an enemy that we assume is Duo, and Duo is basically, “Oh, you wanna go? Let’s go!” Then [Heero] blows the head off a Leo who’s sneaking up on him and then says basically, “You’re welcome,” and then flies off. I dunno, I really enjoyed that. He is funny. He’s a funny character.

There we go, that’s Episode 5. As I said, a lot going on in there. It’s really opening things up to carry on. This is where you start thinking, “Ooo, ok, now I can maybe start predicting what’s going to happen next, except I can’t.” You know? But you will find out what happens in the next one. I think my closing thought is going to be that, I do remember watching this the first time round and thinking, “My god there’s so much story!” compared to other animations. It is fairly relentless. You have to pay attention, otherwise you miss stuff and then you’re like, “oh wait, that one throwaway line about the economy was actually vital to understanding who’s who and what’s what and why they’re doing what they’re doing.” That’s pretty demanding for a kid’s show, despite the fact that it’s one of those shows that does sort of take itself seriously, but at the end of the day, it’s kind of unintentionally cracky.

I’m going to leave it there. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found it interesting. As ever, you can get ahold of me at [lemontrash.tumblr.com](http://lemontrash.tumblr.com/), or through Radio Meteor the website. You can always ping me an email from there, just hit the pineapple button. I will see you in orbit next time. Bye!

[music]


	6. Episode 6 - Party Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to Radio Meteor! I'm Odamaki (aka Lemontrash) and this is the podcast where I watch an episode of 90's anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because people keep asking me what happens at the end but I only watched it once in the early 2000's and can't remember.  
> This week - Party Night, in which we discuss Treize and his Metaphors, Une's terrible strategy and Relena's optimism. Word of the episode is 'kankeinai’.

**Episode 6 - Recorded January 2019**

****

[LISTEN TO EPISODE SIX HERE](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-6---Party-Night-e37nhp)

 

**Below is a copy of the transcript of this episode, created by the smooth and savvy**[ **Noirangetrois,**](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **and punctuated throughout with additional commentary by me in bold and in brackets (Edit: Like this!), plus a few corrections and additions where applicable. As always, if you have something to add, just get in touch! Hit 'Pineapple' on this website in the top bar, or contact me at**[ **lemontrash.tumblr.com**](http://lemontrash.tumblr.com/) **:)**  

 

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# Episode 6

Hey there, and welcome back to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it, because people keep talking about what happens at the end of the series, but I honestly only ever watched it all the way through whilst probably drunk in the early 2000s. So this is my attempt to try and regain some memory of it all.

This week, it’s Party Night. I’m Odamaki and welcome to orbit!

[musical interlude]

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Hi guys. Here we are, back in the wardrobe, in orbit, episode 6, “Party Night.” Or, as they say in Japanese, “Paati Naito” (パーティー·ナイト). Sometimes it really is just that simple. Last time we found out that Relena is really Relena Peacecraft, and today it’s Party Night. First watch through, I thought this was her birthday party, but then I remembered, we’ve already done that. So this is just an unspecified party. If anyone has picked up on why they’re having this shindig, let me know. Either way, it looks like a fairly swish affair.

I’m making a slight change to the format this week. Up till now I’ve talked about language points, and then character points, and then world observations. This episode, it just seems to make more sense to go through and discuss things as and when they appear in the show, and just give my general commentary on it. Mainly it just feels like the parts of this show I can comment on don’t really fall into any particular category as easily this time round. I guess that’s fairly typical of an episode at this stage of the narrative. It’s building up to things, but at the same time it’s still relatively fragmented. Because of that, I’m also not going to give an overview of the episode.

The episode opens with Relena returning to her school. We get an aerial view of the actual building and get an idea of the size and scale of it again. I mentioned last episode how the colony architecture doesn’t have any of this old world heritage. Well, this place has it in buckets. It’s very European. It’s very old fashioned. It looks kind of like a French/German/Swiss sort of massive chateau, and I would like to see McMansions judge Relena’s school. It’s swank, but it’s also got so many nubbing roofs. And it looks like there’s a carp pond in the back as well. You know you’re wealthy if your school has a carp pond. Go ahead and ask me about the history of carp ponds, I dare you.

She gets inside and she’s greeted by Mrs. Darlian. I’ve talked about her on Tumblr before, but what a neglected character. Drink her in, because this is basically all you’re going to see of her. I distinctly remember watching this the first time round, and I just did not identify her as Relena’s mother in any capacity whatsoever. She’s dressed in mourning, but she’s also dressed kind of like a Victorian maid. I pretty much just assumed first time I saw her that she was Relena’s maid or something, and I’m wondering if that is deliberate, because in Japanese, Relena enters the room and she says “Tadaima. Kaerimashita.” (ただ今 帰りました・ただいまかえりました.)　“Tadaima”　（ただいま） is just this stock phrase that you say when you re-enter your home, and “kaerimashita”　（帰りました・かえりました） means “I have come back.” So she doesn’t actually say the word ‘mother’ or anything of that nature, despite the fact that it’s put into the English subtitles, so that’s different.

They have a bit of a conversation in which Relena apologizes for not being able to save her father. This, again, is a crucial part of her character, that she does take responsibility for things that really, she has no business assuming responsibility for. She can’t assume the responsibility for what’s happened. We get these nonverbal glimpses of what her life with Mr. and Mrs. Darlian was like. There’s a cute photo of them on her desk. In it, she’s sitting in Mr. Darlian’s lap. It’s this little cute Daddy/daughter moment, and Mrs. Darlian is stood in the background a little rigidly. Just looking at it, you kind of wonder whether or not she has a closer relationship with Mrs. Darlian in the capacity of her mother as much as she did with her father. I feel like there’s a bigger disparity there.

It also makes you wonder a bit about Mr. and Mrs. Darlian’s relationship as well. They appear to be married but was it more of a case that they got married because of circumstance and because of need to keep this child, who they had some kind of duty to, safe. Did it develop and then they decided to just stick with it, even though the initial feelings have died? It’s very vague. I feel like there’s a lot you could really plumb into there, if you had a mind to. There’s also this question of, who was Mrs. Darlian before she was Mrs. Darlian? Is she also a member of the Sanc Civil Service? Did she have some role there as well?

Mrs. Darlian starts asking if Relena knows that she is Relena Peacecraft and Relena lies, first of all. She says that her father didn’t tell her anything. And then almost immediately, Mrs. Darlian is like, okay then, we need to talk, because there’s something I need to reveal to you at this time. Relena doesn’t want to hear it. I said at the end of the last episode, she had gone back into this identity that she’d originally had as her safe space and that she was just not ready to let go of that. This tiny little segment is really quite heartbreaking, and then is quite rapidly moved away from in the narrative.

She flings her arms around this woman and says, “Zutto Okaa-sama de itte, kudasai.” (ずっとお母さまで言って下さい・ずっとおかあさまでいってください)In the English, that’s translated as, “You’ll always be my mother.” In the Japanese it’s slightly different. “Zutto” is “going forward and forever” or “always.” “Okaa-sama” is a more reverential way to address your mother. “Itte kudasai” is “let me call you Mother,” effectively. So it’s like, “Let me always call you mother.” So she’s really appealing to this woman to not take this away from her, to not shatter completely everything she understands and knows about the world. Because that was just too much.

She could give up her identity in terms of being privileged, she could join in this rebellion, but she’s not ready to give up her family. She’s still quite protective. That is a part of her that gets developed continuously, I think, as the series goes forward. That’s just my opinion right at this second in time. As I watch further episodes I’ll probably redact that. We’ll see.

Next we jump over to Lady Une and Treize. Lady Une is talking about going after Relena. Relena knows too much, she’s gotta be hushed up. The plot thickens in that we see Une prepping to step into the diplomatic void that she’s created. ( **EDIT: Maybe not explicitly, but I think the undercurrent is already there).** The assassination that she’s undertaken has several outcomes in OZ’s favor. They get rid of one of their prime rivals, who is onto them and could mess up their plans. But they also create confusion in the colonies that undermines the political power there. They have a chance to go in, and as we see in later episodes, they set up this swing in the power balance to seize control.

We have Treize knocking around with his tweety-pie birds in a cage. He lets them go and it’s very symbolic. I couldn’t quite decide what metaphor that was supposed to portray. I had a few thoughts about it, which I’ll come back to further on down the line. But we see Treize giving Une orders. He offers her five mobile suits for what is effectively just an attack on a civilian school, and she’s like, “Oh, that’s quite a bit.” In response, he says, with a kind of wink and a nod, “Well you never know where you might encounter the enemy.” Which makes me think that Treize is up to some fishy shit, because they at that stage didn’t know that Heero was parked there, or if they did, then Treize knows but he hasn’t told Une. She definitely doesn’t know that.

We spin right over to Heero, who is preparing to leave the school and he is busy standing at the window being a massive misanthrope, sort of sneering at these normal kids having fun, excited for a party in their party frocks. He says, “Are ni wa kankenai,” (あれには関係ない・あれにはかんけいない） which in the English is translated to, “it doesn’t concern me” or “it has nothing to do with me.” But I feel like the sentiment that it would be better translated as is just a big fat “Whatever!”

I think this is really Heero’s “tatemae.” He really pretends he doesn’t care, that he’s unfeeling, that he’s Mr. Mission and Mr. Gundam Pilot, but he has all these emotions and he has all these interests, these thoughts and again, these witticisms that are kept below the surface and keep bubbling up. The cracks were there before he even landed on Earth, and Relena is the wedge that just keeps battering away at them. Because she can see it. She can see that he’s not entirely what he thinks he is, but I don’t think she realizes that she sees this. As far as she’s concerned, she’s taking him at face value, but it’s not the face value that he expects people to pick up on or that other people do pick up on.

**(EDIT: Whoops. Idiot brain strikes again - I forgot I’d previously recorded a section about tatemae that was later edited out. ‘Tatemae’ and ‘Honne’ are paired concepts relating to how you feel. ‘Tatemae’ literally means ‘standing in front of’. It’s the public persona you put out. ‘Honne’ in contrast, is your real feelings. Most cultures have an aspect of this; it’s like saying ‘Thank you, how lovely!’ when you receive a gift you neither like nor want, but Japan kind of goes beyond that. Now, on reflection, I wouldn’t say i used this term correctly in relation to what’s going on with Heero in this scene, but perhaps it’s tatemae adjacent. Let me explain.**

**Tatemae is typically used for the sake of politeness and cohesion. It’s all about fitting in. You say ‘yes, yes’ because social convention dictates that this is the polite and correct thing to do, and inside (honne) you feel ‘no, no’. The art of it, is that most Japanese people are adept at reading when a ‘yes’ is for real, or is just tatemae. I have to say, the British are also not bad at this, but for some folks, this is a really exasperating aspect of life in Japan that takes a lot of getting used to. At any rate, Heero’s not saying ‘whatever’ because he’s being polite. After all, he’s talking to himself. But I still don’t feel like it’s a genuine expression of his emotions. In that respect it’s ‘tatemae’ to his role, rather than to society. It’s basically also… very teenage. How often have you heard that old chestnut? ‘Ugh, whatever, I don’t even want to go to the party anyway- it’s stupid.’)**

That is clear when Relena goes to confront him at the school. At this point she has got even less time for his drama than she has had at any other point. She surprises him, and then she’s very fast to jump on that weak point. She’s like “Oh, so even you can be surprised,” and she mocks him for it. I feel for Heero a little bit, like, boy, he gets played like a fiddle by Relena in this scene. She goes in and this time she uses her charm and she is polite to him, but she uses it as a weapon.

She tells him that they’re on the same side. She basically tells him to stop being emo and to come down and at least enjoy the party when he has time. It’s an interesting philosophy that she pulls out of the bag here, that yes, we’re going to war, but if we have an opportunity to be human, we should take it. I think that’s the crux of the matter in that scene there, of what Relena’s message is. His message is that he can’t afford to do that.

**(EDIT: or put it another way, she’s pointing out that she sees right through his ‘ugh, whatever’ attitude and reasoning that there’s no real obligation on him not to do a little of what he wants. After all, they have no idea Une is going to attack in five minutes.)**

So that’s the first half of the episode. Queue big giant head moment.

[musical interlude]

* * *

 

Meanwhile, we are still calling around the houses of what all the other pilots are up to. Aside from the main plot of Heero and Relena and their emotion, they refuse to let you forget that these characters exist and they’re doing stuff. They could very easily have ignored these guys. They’re not really doing a huge amount at this stage. But it keeps giving you these flashes episode after episode of, these guys exist, they’re doing this stuff, remember they’re here. At the same time it’s, well, I’ve talked a lot in the first episode about how this isn’t a traditional ensemble anime. There’s still not this push to go round and collect them all up, and we’re all going to work together and that’s the goal, and the separation is an issue that has to be overcome.

It’s kind of a question of, why do they keep doing this? ( **NOIR SAYS: I think it builds up their characters a little for when they are central to the plot)** Why not just forget these guys are there and focus on the main thread of the action and then bring it later, because they’re not really foreshadowing a huge amount either. I wonder if it is to do with the fact that this whole anime was commissioned to sell five new toys, effectively, and there had to be five new Gundam designs. I guess that could be the reason why this is so as it is. There’s just this commercial push to organize it that way.

Anyway, we get a nod to Wufei. He’s still alive. Meanwhile, Trowa is still being a little bitch. Just from the point of view of his employer, this kid turned up, got the job (just about), then he vanishes for several days, then he walks back up and is late for work and then he just gives a load of sass. If this was any employment situation other than the circus, where Trowa has exhibited a few very useful and niche skills, you get the feeling he would be kicked out on his rear pretty quickly.

We get this scene with Trowa being the target for Catherine’s knife throwing act. She refers to him as “oningyo-san” ( **EDIT: Idiot bilingual klaxon!! This means ‘doll’)** jokingly, and then it fades to black. Then she realizes, actually, she’s unwittingly put her finger right on the button of the situation and suddenly the emo intensifies and she realizes, he’s a mess. He is a proper, deep down in the doldrums mess. It throws her enough that she accidentally nicks him with the knife. But equally, Catherine’s super perky. I really like Catherine, and she’s a lot less naggy and a lot less older sister-y than I remember her being or that I seem to recall her being characterized as in fandom.

We get another nice little language point here. He reminds her of “kemono,” (獣•けもの) which in the English is translated as “beast.” I’ve talked about beasts before, but that was “kaibutsu,”(怪物•かいぶつ) and this is “kemono.” “Kemono” is “beast” as in lions, tigers and bears, oh my! It’s about animals or brute animals and she compares him to something like a wild animal. Not terribly sophisticated, but perhaps if we go for the most flattering version of it, inspiring, I don’t know. I don’t really know what to make of that sentence. He’s kind of basic, is maybe what she’s saying there. But not in a like, “Ya basic,” kind of way.

She also says, “If you smiled more, you’d be cute,” which cracks me up just based on how modern discourse goes about catcalling and everything. The fact that we have a female character telling a boy, “Oh, you know what, you’d be so much cuter if you smiled.” Just kind of blows my mind slightly. She also says “Moto ga ii,” (本がいい? 元がいい?) which I’m kind of question mark over. The English subtitles translate that as, “you’re quite good looking, you know.” But “moto,” I can’t find exactly which character (kanji) that is. I have it in the back of my head that it’s “karada” (体) as in “body,” as in “you have a good form,” which I guess you can translate as you’re good looking, but it can also mean, maybe you’re in good condition. I don’t know, this one I’m a bit baffled on. If I figure it out, I’ll come back to it. This one would have been helpful if I could have seen the actual Japanese subtitles, but I’ve still not figured out a way to get those working.( **EDIT: So evidently it’s not 体 karada; which leaves me with moto as in 元 or 本. Given where it is in the sentence, I’m inclined towards 元 which is basically ‘stuff’. A component or an ingredient. ‘Your stuff is good’. So maybe this IS a slangy way of talking about someone’s looks. *laughing* sounds a little predatory. TL;DR I’m still not too sure on this one.)**

Anyway, that’s two done. We check in with Wufei and we check in with Trowa, and then it jumps back to Heero, who is staring at Relena like he does not know what to make of her. At this stage she declares an alliance, that she is on his side and that she’s fighting the same good fight that he’s fighting, despite the fact they haven’t discussed exactly what he’s doing one to one. ( **NOIR SAYS: I’m guessing J never told him he spoke to her) (EDIT: Definitely doesn’t happen in this episode at any rate!)** She’s spoken to Dr. J, he’s given her his version of events, but she hasn’t gotten from Heero exactly what he understands about the situation, which I think that even now is starting to change from Dr. J’s view of things. And she makes this statement, this resolution that she’s committed to this fight. She’s keeping some things in her pocket. She’s keeping her Darlian identity, she’s keeping her family, which is fair enough, but she’s also putting her cards on the table a little bit, and it does surprise him.

Next scene, Une is arriving, and she is very much set up as the undeniable bad guy here. Zechs is a bit questionable, he’s got some sympathy given to him in the narrative, so has Noin. Very much so Noin. Treize, he just kind of flaffs about making metaphors. We’re not really sure about him yet. But Lady Une is an antagonist you can sink your teeth into. She’s very clearly the baddie. Even her soldiers think that she’s cuckoo, but you know, we can’t have sympathy for this guy who questions her orders anyway because he’s a worm who caves to his job, and then he’s dead.

Also, are you telling me that Wing Zero was sunbathing next to the school all this time, and nobody noticed? I call baloney. There would have been a groundskeeper or something who would have stumbled upon that. And I can’t also help but think that Une has terrible plans. She has this idea that she needs to get rid of Relena. Fair enough. Putting my baddie hat on, I can see how that makes sense. You need to shut this kid up. But this is not the most subtle approach. She literally flies into a boarding school with an aircraft carrier and five mobile suits to attack a civilian party that is totally unarmed as far as she is aware, and her sole reason for doing this is that people will think that the colonies are attacking. Why would the colonies attack a school? Out of all of the possible targets on Earth, how is that on the most believable? And then she’s actually probably very damn lucky that Heero actually does crop up, because then they can be like, “Oh yeah, a Gundam was there, we had to attack.”

Anyway, then the episode is like, we’ve had enough of actual plot, and we skip over to Quatre. He is chilling at his desk, a la Spiderman, in a very very empty room. Just a depressingly empty office, playing battleship and having some tea, pondering. And he’s sitting there like, “Ah, more Gundams. Hmm. Gotta catch ‘em all.” Then we leave him. Meanwhile, Howard’s getting pissed. He’s having a drinking party. You know, big mood. Duo is moonbathing? I dunno, he’s having a good chill, they’re celebrating having fixed his Gundam. But rather than rushing off to find his mission or carry on whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing, he’s having a little break.

If you have any questions about how [Howard] is actually, genuinely getting pissed and what he’s drinking, when he responds to Duo saying, “The moon looks so much better from Earth.” He says, in English, “Oh you bet, it’s a beauty.” In Japanese, he says “tsukimizake to iun da.” (月見酒と言うんだ•つきみざけというんだ) “Tsukimi” (月見•つきみ) is “moon viewing,” it’s this traditional autumnal activity, usually in the late October full moon. You go out and look at it because it’s big and it’s beautiful. And the “zake”(酒•さけ) is booze. So “tsukimizake” is booze that you drink while looking at the moon. It’s typically “sake,” Japanese rice wine, or “shochu,” which is like a rougher version of sake. So he says “tsukimizake to iun da,” “That’s why they call it ‘moon-viewing booze’,” and you know, classic Mike Howard. Love it.

Duo makes this comment in the scene about how the moon, which I think reflects back quite nicely on that scene in the previous episode where Mr. Darlian tells Relena to look at the Earth and how beautiful it is. So Duo’s talking about how beautiful the moon is, and he says, from L2, from the colonies, it looks like a graveyard, they are just too close for it. There’s again this theme, this sort of lost appreciation for the heavens. There’s this lost perspective of how beautiful the natural world is and humanity can be. And he’s also lying there, thinking about Heero, and this is probably the scene that launched a thousand fics. It’s cute. I also really think that Duo likes people who can punk him. It rustles his jimmies in a good way when somebody manages to yank his chain and get one over him and make him laugh.

Then the episode decides that’s too chill and we go straight back to the action. We’ve got Heero still fighting Lady Une’s mobile suits. It demonstrates how good Heero is as a pilot as well. He knows very much the capabilities of his enemy, and when the mobile suit soldiers try to pull up, he gets quite angry. He shouts at them, “You’re too heavy!” And then he blows them up. But he’s a little bit like Wufei in that he’s annoyed that his enemy is so poorly prepared or bad at doing what they’re supposed to be doing, at being a worthwhile enemy in some respects.

Relena quickly moves to protect some of her peers and then tells them that they need to run. These girls are really quick to bail. They don’t question her, they’re out of there. And we get another instance of Heero targeting somebody. He zooms in on Relena with his targeting system. He’s not actually targeting to fire, but he turns to almost attack, and then he protects. This is similar to what he does with Duo when he’s teasing Duo, but this time it’s not a game and he’s genuinely performing an action to preserve her, and then he genuinely questions himself as to why he does it.

This is the game changer. He had not planned to do this. It completely changes how he operates following on from this. And he’s super pissed off about it. Just as he did before when she yelled “Dame!” and then he didn’t allow himself to smoosh onto the rocks on the beach, he asks himself again and again, “Why am I doing this? Why can’t I kill her? Why am I hesitating?” She’s really really gotten under skin. And I think he’s suddenly realized on a deeper level than he intended to that she could represent a third option to all of the options he’s got, in the same way that in later episodes, Catherine does that for Trowa.

It gets into the crunch, and then, deus ex machina, Treize calls Une and calls her off. And it’s a bit puzzling at first but then we get into his office and we learn that Noin has actually telephoned to beg for clemency for Relena on Zechs’ behalf. Zechs wouldn’t do it himself. Ass. But she has taken it upon herself to do this. And it’s questionable at this stage as to how much contact she has ever had with Treize. He’s her superior, her superior’s superior in fact, but she goes out of her way to do this, even though there’s this wider attack to blame this attack on the colonies and further undermine their status within the Earth Sphere Alliance.

( **EDIT: lbro009 pointed out that in Ep 0, Noin serves with the specials led by Treize so she has met him if you want to take that version of events into account. This is also true in Frozen Teardrop, where she serves with Zechs and Treize in the specials.)**

And then Treize sort of floats around being more metaphorical, and the birds come back. And again, I’m not sure what metaphor this is supposed to represent, but I did wonder if it was maybe that the birds were Zechs and Relena and he was on the verge of throwing them away as pieces in his game. So Zechs is Treize’s protege, as we’ve discussed. He’s been molded and created and used by Treize, but perhaps at this stage Treize was thinking, “Maybe I don’t need him anymore. Maybe he’s not important enough to have this consideration of not killing his sister.”

Or it could even be a more manipulative situation, where it’s a bait and switch, so he’s threatening Relena, and then shows his clemency in order to pull Zechs back into line or make sure that Zechs does toe the line. Because presumably, Treize has always known who Relena was and where she was. He could have taken her out of the game virtually anytime he wanted. So Treize is definitely playing a long game here, and he’s playing everybody against each other.

( **EDIT: So my memory is COMPLETE GARBAGE. Noir caught that Treize says ‘So the rumours are true’, which I can confirm on a rewatch that he does in both languages. He’s no longer on the line to Noin which suggests that he’s being honest. Scrap that theory anyway…)**

There was a book about a mouse called Pentecost. I don’t know if anybody remembers this one, but in it there was a seven-legged insect. It’s entire role was that it played both ends against the middle. It manipulated everybody to just serve its own purpose and then it never really explained what it was doing and it flew away. So Treize is kind of a seven-legged bug here. That’s what I’m going to refer to him as until I get further into more episodes and I understand perhaps maybe more about what he’s doing. But I to admit, I have never ever ever understood Treize as a character. Not once. Maybe this time. But until then, seven-legged bug.

[musical interlude]

* * *

 

The final scene, then. We have Relena and Heero in this bizarre showdown, and this is another one I struggle to get my head around. She keeps demanding for him to kill her. This is something that everyone likes to make fun of. It’s very memeable. There’s another of those episode scenes that tries to take itself very seriously but it just ends up kind of ridiculous because it’s just so over the top. Very hammy. Heero is like, “Why can’t I kill her?” and she’s like, “Just kill me!” and then he can’t and it just goes on and on.

But trying to figure out what is going through their heads here. Heero I think is a bit more simple. He just has got this situation where he actually can’t bring himself to kill her because he doesn’t see her fully as an enemy. Relena’s motivations are less transparent but I think it boils down to the fact that she just wants to know if he would do it. She doesn’t really seem to believe that he’s capable of it, of looking a civilian, someone like her right in the eye and then murdering them in cold blood. And although he’s a soldier and he does kill, that is quite a different scenario to an opponent in war. Again, we’ve got back to Wufei and how he treats Noin. He says, “I don’t kill bleeding hearts or women.” Essentially, “I don’t kill people who are not my enemy.”

Relena’s quite jaded. She knows that the world terrible, and I think this is a situation that she wants proof that it’s not actually as bad as it seems. That whatever else she’s seen in the world, the violence, the fact that her father was assassinated, that the world is horribly dangerous, that the irredeemability of the world is not yet fact. So she wanted to prove that he would threaten her but then put the gun down because he was too human to do it. And it might be, you know, Relena doesn’t seem to value her own life very much, anymore than he does. Perhaps it’s a situation where, if he doesn’t put the gun down, if he followed through on his threat, then she would not have been leaving a world worth living in anyway.

This is a defiance of a world that was being forged out of war. So this is a world that is at conflict. Deep conflict, and has been for a very long time. It’s a world that makes child soldiers, it makes children’s lives into tools, or just collateral. From there, her character goes on to be this push to prove that someone, a civilian, could make a difference, could find peace without a weapon in her hand. It’s the question she poses to Dr. J. Surely, there’s another way. These are the kind of thoughts that are conflicted in her head.

That’s pretty much it for Episode 6. Overall I’m not really sure what to make of this episode. Similar to previous episodes, it jumps around a lot, but it is building up to something, and we get now very much the baseline is established for the whole Relena/Heero conversation that’s going to be taken forward. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or comments or suggestions. You can always find me at [lemontrash.tumblr.com](http://lemontrash.tumblr.com/) or an the Radio Meteor website where you may have heard this. I hope you enjoy this, I hope you found it interesting. I am Odamaki and I will see you in orbit next time. Bye!

[music]

 


	7. Episode 7 - Scenario for Bloodshed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90’s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because I just have so many emotions about space.  
> This week, we discuss how manly Quatre is, how completely gauche Wufei is, and I get unexpectedly enthusiastic about Septem. God help my soul. Word of the episode is 'kisama'.

**Episode 7 - Recorded January 2019**

****

[LISTEN TO EPISODE SEVEN HERE](https://anchor.fm/odamaki-lemontrash/episodes/Episode-7---Scenario-for-Bloodshed-e39qb9)

* * *

**Below is a copy of the transcript of this episode, created by the astrological** [ **Noirangetrois,** ](https://noirangetrois.tumblr.com/) **and punctuated throughout with additional commentary by me in bold and in brackets (Edit: Like this!), plus a few links to relevant mentions. :)**

 

**So without further ado, here are The Footnotes.**

* * *

 

Hey there and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because I just have so many emotions about space. This week it’s episode seven, “Scenario for Bloodshed.” "Ryūketsu e no Shinario," or 流血へのシナリオ in Japanese. Welcome to orbit.

 

[musical interlude]

 

Okay, Episode 7. I’m just going to go out and say it, this episode is kinda boring. There’s a few great big takeaways, namely that they accidentally kill off all of the pacifists. Smooth move. But other than that there’s a lot in here that’s just quite forgettable as well. I suppose it fits into that point in the storyline where it is absolutely necessary that you have a lot more stuff introduced that has to be explained and justified in order to set up... literally the next chapter. That’s what they refer to this whole situation -  this whole scenario as. But in doing that, it does take away some of the immediacy. It does have this information overload.

 

Let’s go back to the old format and start off with a discussion of the language. I’m going to do this by character this week. So we’re going to start off with Quatre. He has a conversation where he’s on the telephone, and this is a nice example of his character, because he’s off on a super secret mission to attack the New Edwards base, where he believes all of the OZ leaders are being gathered. He decides he’s going to book a hotel. I assume it’s at least a three star. It sounds like a nice hotel - the Starley Hotel in San Francisco. But he rings them up and he says something which is translated in the English subtitles as, “I’m traveling by myself, is that a problem?”

 

If you put on your hoteliers hat, you might be thinking, “Why is that a problem?”. Because if you’re a hotel you get a lot of single travelers coming through. And the reason it sounds strange is because that’s not what he says in the Japanese. In the Japanese, he says, “Kodomo hitori.” (子供一人・こどもひとり） “Kodomo” - “child,” and then “hitori,” （一人・ひとり）“alone” or “unaccompanied.” What he’s effectively saying here is, “I am an unaccompanied minor. Is that a problem?”

 

It suddenly makes more sense in a hotel context. Maybe they don’t have a policy to allow under 18s to book rooms. I suppose this highlights the fact that I could be over-egging ( **Edit: Alright, I am. I over-egg everything but that’s half the fun)** this whole theme, but at the same time, this is the first instance of one of the pilots referring to themselves as a child on any level. They’ve been referred to as children or “shounen” by other people, and they have never refuted that but neither have they claimed it for their own either. This is the first in-character, in-episode that, yeah, I am not an adult.

 

Quatre does quite a bit of talking this episode, which means we finally get a bit of insight into his speech patterns. We’ve already discussed that he uses the pronoun “boku,” （僕・ぼく）which is that politer, more boyish pronoun, and that he is relatively polite in general. Just like I said with Relena, she says “Hanashite kudasai,” as in “let go of me, please!” He does the same thing in the heat of battles. He’s Mr. Manners in a crisis. When Duo and Trowa are fighting at the end, he doesn’t use his strength to intervene, but he says, “Matte kudasai!” （待って下さい！・まってください！）“Matte”（待って・まって) means “wait” and then “kudasai” is please. It’s very ingrained for him to speak in this manner.

 

Having said that, when you compare Quatre to the other pilots, he is polished, he’s more polite. But he’s no less direct, and I think that’s key, and I think that really gets missed in the English. This scale of how direct something can be is very different to how we speak in English and how we register that in English. Rather than… I’m trying to think of a good way to clarify this…

 

Temporarily, I’m going to jump over and talk about Trowa and Heero, because they speak very directly, but with this manner that they just simply don’t have time to deal with pleasantries. They’ve got things to do; they’re on a mission. Small talk has gone out the window. They’re both users of the pronoun “ore,” （俺・おれ）which we discussed is that one that demonstrates a little bit of arrogance. You’ve got a good opinion of yourself, it’s very masculine. And they both use endings on their verbs which are what’s called the “dictionary form,” which is the most basic form of the verb. In the conversation that Quatre has with Trowa, Trowa says, “Ore wa hitori de yaru.” (おれはひとりでやる・俺は一人でやる） “Ore wa,” “I am,” with that masculine form, “hitori de,” “alone,” then “yaru,” “will do this.”

 

“I’m doing this alone,” is the translation, which is a good translation.

 

Quatre responds with, “boku mo sou sa,”　（ぼくもそうさ・僕もそうさ） which automatically, even in the in the tone, “ore wa hitori de yaru,” “boku mo sou sa,” it sounds so much lighter and friendlier and much more polite. Make no mistake, it’s still very direct. So that “boku” (僕・ぼく） is that boyish “I,” “mo,”（も） “also.”

 

“Sou”　（そう） is used a lot in sentences akin to the work “ditto,” so it’s whatever the person said before, that action is what I’m referring to but I’m not gonna repeat it verbatim. Then that “sa” （さ）ending is where it gets really interesting. “Sa” is similar to the ending on Japanese sentences, “yo,” （よ）which means a statement of fact or a statement you’re very confident in, or a method of slightly correcting people. That’s how you use “yo.” If someone said to me, “Oh, it’s sunny today,” I’d be like, “Ame yo,”　（雨よ・あめよ） as in, “no, it’s raining,” “ame,”　（雨） “rain,” “yo,” “duh.”

 

“Sa” is used to soften things that would otherwise sound irresponsible. That’s one way you can use it. It is also used as a statement of fact. It’s a little bit more casual, and it’s also one that, although it is nominally gender neutral and it is used by all genders, there is a stereotype that middle-aged old men use “sa” a lot. So it does have this sort of masculine connotation to it. So I feel like that’s really telling about Quatre. He has directness, but he’s also got the social nous to put some polish on what he says. He’s no less direct, but he does it in a way that’s got a bit more panache.

 

Let’s compare that to, again, Trowa and Heero. They just tend to be direct for the sake of efficiency of communication. Like, ’I’ve got something to say, gotta say it, there I’ve said it’. Compare that to Wufei.

 

Wufei we can assume… well at this point, we don’t know much about Wufei, but going meta for the moment, we do know that he has come from a relatively privileged position within his own clan. He is one of the movers and shakers of his people. He is educated. He has presumably been taught some manners as well, but he does not use them. Wufei is just rude, and it is a deliberate choice, because we can assume, that perhaps unlike Trowa and Heero who lack social graces because of lack of experience, Wufei knows damn well what he’s doing.

 

Like I said in Episode 4, he is portrayed so unsympathetically, he’s almost impossible to like. He wades in at the end and he addresses everybody using “kisama.” (貴様・きさま）Now, I’ve been talking about this hierarchy of ways to address people. “Aitsu” （あいつ）and “koitsu”（こいつ） are sort of third person ways to talk about somebody. “Anata”（あなた） is hardly ever used. That is the pure pronoun for “you,” but you don’t tend to use it. It can be over familiar, it can sound a bit daft because it’s something middle-aged women use to talk about their Japanese husbands and 90% of people don’t have that. It’s kind of old fashioned. “Omae” (お前・おまえ）you can bro-sie that up, and you’ve got “teme,” （てめぇ）which is rude, but the one that you absolutely cannot make friendly or jokey is “kisama,” and that’s what he wades in with. And it’s almost too much.

 

If you use “kisama” in real life, you are likely ー if you use “teme” even in real life - you are likely to be laughed at for having read too much manga, and fighting manga in particular. Wufei falls very much into the category of “that anime guy” who uses all of the stereotypical rough language to sound like he’s a super tough guy. But if we made this a little more meta, it’s almost laughable, the kind of disparity between how Wufei talks. He’s come straight out of some, like, high school delinquent anime, and the others are all fairly straightforward. Which I do kind of enjoy. But also it continues to underline how Wufei is this character you’re not supposed to like, and that’s bizarre because he is one of the main five. He is a protagonist, he’s supposed to be one of the good guys. But he is the butt-monkey. Maybe that’s the point. He is supposed to be the one you’re like, “Oh, god, _that_ guy.” It’s just amusing to watch. I really just can’t decide.

 

Duo is the most difficult one for me to actually listen to and understand what he’s saying. He speaks very fast. But he also plays with language in a much more fun way. He is much more fun to listen to. Trowa and Heero are very direct and to the point and they use the words that suit the context. Duo messes around a little bit. When he sneaks onto Heero’s aircraft carrier, casually hitching a lift, and Heero runs down to the hold and finds him popping out of Deathscythe, Duo just greets him by saying, “Omae hayaku tsumekomu yo.” (お前早く詰め込むよ・おまえはやくつめこむよ）“Omae” is a way to address somebody that you’re familiar with, and that’s how I think Duo is using it here. He has very much adopted Heero into his gang. Then we have “hayaku tsumekomu.” “Hayaku”（早く・はやく） is hurry up, and then “tsumekomu,”（詰め込む・つめこむ） they translate it in the English subtitles as, “to load.” Then that “yo” is the alternative to “sa,” which we’ve just discussed.

 

But that “tsumekomu” verb is not the one you would typically use for putting a machine onto an aircraft carrier. It means “to stuff” or “to cram.” You would use “tsumekomu” if you were packing a suitcase and you have to sit on the lid to close it. What he’s effectively saying is, “Hey bud, shove yours in as well.” It’s nice, it’s nice. It’s very much his personality. I enjoyed that for no reason other than it’s just 100% Duo’s own good self.

 

We have one weird and interesting sentence with Zechs where he addresses himself in the third person. This is where he’s about to land in Nairobi and he is having an introspective moment and saying, if the Alliance falls and OZ takes over, what really changes? And then he asks himself, “Dewa nase tatakaunda, Zechs.”　（では、なぜ戦うんだ） That “dewa”（では） is “in that case”, “nase,”　（なぜ） “why,” “tatakaunda,” （戦うんだ・たたかうんだ）“are we fighting.

 

“Dewa nase tatakaunda. Zechs.” But the “Zechs” that he says is separate to the question. It’s almost like an afterthought. We get this hint that Zechs, like Lady Une, has a split between his identities. Very similar, perhaps, to what Relena is also going through with her Darlian/Peacecraft identities, only his is much further down the line, much more established, and he’s also in a position with much higher stakes. He can’t afford to be found out as Milliardo Peacecraft at this point, even though it seems to be pretty much public knowledge.

 

He has adopted this Zechs personality as a means to an end that he has sort of lost. He has sort of lost his objective. So quite why he’s addressing himself in the third person here in unclear. Is it that he’s addressing “Zechs Merquise, why are you fighting,” or is “Zechs Merquise” the answer? So, “what are we fighting for,” and then he reminds himself, “oh I’m doing this because I’m pretending to be this other person.” That’s really the first big step we have in his character arc, or the first sign that there even will be one beyond him getting a big robot and fighting for Treize.

 

The very last language thing will tie into what I’m going to talk about in terms of what we’ve learned about the world, so we’ll do that in a moment.

 

[musical interlude]

 

In this episode, everybody groups up in two different teams. They go to New Edwards Base, and they accidentally kill Noventa, Vente, and the other Alliance pacifists. It’s that episode, and it takes some 20 minutes to set up and do. I just gonna go out and say it. It’s kind of boring. This episode, we get introduced a number of new players, and just like Mrs. Darlian, drink them in, because they’re gonna be gone in the next ten minutes.

 

We get a really confused picture of who is in charge and who is doing what. We’ve got Field Marshal Noventa, who is the chief commander. We can assume he is possibly the absolute head honcho of all of the armed forces and the Alliance. He is like the president of this organization, and everything filters down from him. Makes you wonder why it’s in such a poor state. You get introduced to General Septem, who is the leader of the Alliance space forces, and we are introduced to General Vente, who is the leader of the Alliance’s terrestrial forces. And a bunch of other people who are not important enough to be given names. They just get to be killed.

 

And somewhere in this weird mix we have the Specials. They keep talking about OZ as if OZ and the Specials are completely different. And perhaps they are, or perhaps they’re not, because Treize is involved with OZ. This is where I get really confused as to what the actual Venn diagram looks like. Where is that overlap? It’s so muddled. This is the bit where the whole show falls apart because it’s so quickly slapped together. There’s no real explanation of what the hell is happening. It’s overly complicated. And then you’ve got Treize playing both ends against the middle. Mr. Seven-legged Bug.

 

Let’s start with what we do know. The Alliance was founded to deter militarism, but inadvertently somehow became a military power of its own right. It has been putting money and everything else into weapons development and building armies and bases. Somehow its objectives have changed from what it was originally designed to do. Part of that might be because you’ve got people like Bonaparte, who was blown up in his blimp in a previous episode, who was using the Alliance’s structure to garner power and basically just squat like a parasite on top of everything, and lead the good life with relative ease.

 

So we’ve got an Alliance that has ideals. It’s become too bloated and people are using it to their own advantage. Then you have the pacifists, the General Noventas, who are looking to take the Alliance back onto its old track to try and demilitarize and make it more of a United Nations type setup, I assume, where it’s much more about discussions between Earth and the colonies. Discussions between nations on Earth as well. We still have separate borders on Earth from levels of governments under the Alliance.

 

Then we have the Specials, led by Colonel Treize, with Lieutenant Colonel Une, and they are the spigot into all of the money of Romafeller and all of the highest tech military ware, so all of the mobile suit tech comes through the Specials, with the allowance that they will be able to drop in and do what they want in terms of warfare. And then there’s OZ.

 

OZ is really poorly defined. J has already pegged them as the enemy. We know that Treize is involved with them, but who they are and how they fit into this in unclear.

 

Treize spreads rumors that the OZ leaders are gathering at New Edwards Base, rather than Alliance pacifists or this more general conference. But it’s not clear what he actually claims. Is he claiming that Noventa and all that were OZ? Or is OZ well known? Where has it come from? In, I want to say, Frozen Teardrop, as much as we dislike it, mentions that Odin Lowe worked for the Colony Autonomy Organization, which later became OZ, if I have that right. If I don’t have that right, please correct me because I’ve had it in my head that that was the case. Even then that seems very circular.

 

So you’ve got a pacifist movement that became militarized, and then you had an autonomy organization that then became anti-colony. What the fuck is going on on this planet? It’s just so messed up. And then Treize messes it all up even more. They’re having this conference and Noventa has the room, he has support. He’s saying essentially, “Let’s demilitarize. We know there’s a threat from the colonies, but this is perhaps a very good opportunity for us to speak to them and say, hold on, we deserve peace, let’s open communications, let’s dial this back. We don’t have to actually raise it to a level of war, because it’s not war yet.” And he has the support of the room. They are willing to do this.

 

And he is right, because the Gundams are not supported 100% by the colonies. There are people in the colonies who are willing to sit down and have this conversation. And Treize essentially says, “It’s all going in the wrong direction if it goes that way.” Why? Why? Beyond causing a war, I don’t understand what possible motivation he has, other than he’s like the Joker in Batman and just wants to see shit burn. That’s all I can think of. He has no motive, other than just being a seven-legged bug. And he gets his way, because has staged an OZ coup, I assume he’s been leading it, and basically ruins everything, and tricks the Gundam pilots into assassination all of the pacifists, creating a power void which then he can step into.

 

On that note, this episode and particularly the blowing up of the pacifists is generally accepted as Heero’s big mistake. Heero certainly takes it all on himself, and he was the guy who pulled the trigger. It’s also picked up a bit like that in fandom, but I’m not sure that’s really fair. He wasn’t the only person who got this mission spec. Duo got it as well; so did Trowa and Quatre. They all followed on as well. Heero’s machine is the only one that’s capable of quick flight, which gives him this massive advantage, but if anybody else had been in Wing Gundam rather than Heero, I think they would have done exactly the same thing.

 

It’s only Wufei who has a different perspective on it. We’re not quite sure where that comes from. Whether Instructor O got different information or he figured out that it was rumor and tipped Wufei off, but then didn’t tell anybody else is one scenario, which is pretty fucking dodgy. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, O, if that’s what’s happened. Or Wufei’s the only one who has been suspicious and cynical enough to sit back and question everything that he’s getting. That would make sense to do that because they all receive this mission; they all jump straight into following it, despite the fact that they are on Earth and much closer [than the scientists] and this information has been recycled through space and, obviously, spy networks. None of them thought, “You know what, I might go down to the New Edwards Base and do a little bit of hacking, just to double check who’s turning up.” ( **Edit: Events in Episode 12 actually argue against this, so be sure to check that out!)**

 

They’re all quite capable of this. None of them did it. Except perhaps Wufei. Even though he is a butt, and he is the butt monkey, he gets it right. And he also sneaks up on everybody. You know, for shame Duo. You’re supposed to be the sneaky one. Should have seen him coming.

 

I’m just willing to blame Treize for this. I think it’s all Treize’s fault. That’s my 2 cents on this. Give Heero a break.

 

Here’s something I forgot to mention. Duo immediately, or instinctively IDs Heavyarms as an ally. Trowa and Quatre open fire because they don’t know what the hell they’re looking at, and Duo uses the work “mikata.” (味方・みかた） He’s like, “even though we’re on the same side.” Then he questions it. Well, who are these guys? And Heero’s like, “I don’t know. They could be new OZ models or something.” But I do find that really interesting. It’s probably just a glitch of the script, but I did love that Duo immediately spotted a Gundam and was like, “A friend!!”

 

I’m also gonna give Septem a bit of a nod here. He is a gross idiot. He does raise some valid points in the conference when he questions, “If we demilitarize, what about the attacks that we’ve been undergoing recently from the Gundams?” Because at this stage they don’t know for a fact who the Gundams are or what they want, other than completely random destruction of Alliance stuff. Because nobody has issued a statement. Heero or such has not gone onto YouTube and put out a message. Even if it’s really basic, like “Alliance bad, we want them dead.” And then Treize, quite cannily, doesn’t lie. He says, “We think the colonies made them (true) for purely destructive purposes.” Also true. They are weapons. It’s very hard to think of a reason why these things would have been invented if it wasn’t just for destruction. They weren’t exactly designed for ballet, were they?

 

So I’m gonna give Septem a bit of a boost here. He’s a gross idiot; he gets poorly used, and he gets killed, overkilled. The man’s already dead falling out of a plane, Une, you didn’t have to shoot him through the head. But he’s not as bad as he was. He did have a horrible voice actor, I recall, in the English version, but in Japanese, he doesn’t sound too bad. He just looks fugly. That is something I never thought I’d be doing　ー stanning for Septem. That’s also a sentence I never, ever want to repeat in my life. My god.

 

Lastly, on this whole splintering thing where we have Zechs make his first big step onto his character arc, where he is addressing himself by name, is that he offers Noin an out. So far he’s been kind of detached and cold from Noin. He’s ignored all her advances. He kind of cares about her general well-being, but he’s not buddy-buddy. However, he is very uneasy about dragging her into this coup. Then they’re in the plane en route and he warns her, essentially saying, “You might not like where this is going.” I think underneath that, he’s saying, “You might well think different of me after this happens.”

 

And Noin sticks with him. In fact she’s even told not to overdo it. She’s mad. She’s kind of out for revenge for recruits, and in the absence of Wufei, she’s willing to take it out on whoever it is she’s told to fight. It’s only in the heat of the battle that she goes, “This is a very bloody way to set a foundation for peace.” So she does start questioning it there. Again, it makes you wonder who Noin would be if she wasn’t in this situation. Poor old Noin. I do kind of like her; I do kind of feel for her. I don’t understand her; I don’t think I’d ever be her, but I do feel for her.

 

So that’s it. And I apologize this episode is kind of muddled, and there are no good or clear answers, other than that what has been retroactively added into the canon. The episode itself doesn’t clarify incredibly well what is going on. However, as Treize puts it, the curtain has raised for a new chapter and effectively, one man has tipped the whole world over into war. He must have been working on this for months, and he’s succeed.

 

I’m going to quote what [ Lithle (I think) wrote in... probably the fanfic, “Salt:” ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lithle/pseuds/lithle) ( **Edit: it was and she did! And also it’s excellent and you should read it right now.)** Treize’s whole motivation is that he wants to rub humanity’s nose in the mess they’ve made on the carpet, and it’s always stuck with me because that just seems like the only summary of what he’s doing that makes sense to me. I will keep watching, obviously. Hopefully, Episode 8 will make up for how boring this episode was. And hopefully give us something else to sink our teeth into, really, in what the hell Treize is doing. I have hardly talked about his character or how he talks because there’s nothing that really stands out or makes sense or is telling. He’s polite when he needs to be, and he just farts around with birds mostly.

 

I think the problem with Treize, and the problem with this series is that the antagonist… They wanted an antagonist that was like Char Aznabal from the original MS Gundam series, who was sort of sympathetic, who could come over to one side or the other, die heroically and get a redemption or whatever. But they also needed an enemy enemy, and they wanted him to be not gross. They wanted him to be this sort of suave and sexy sort of character, when they’ve got some quite chunky personalities who just kind of stomp around being like, “Uh, huh, guh,” teenage grunt.

 

Trowa, by the way, still looks like someone pissed in his cereal. I am looking forward to him cheering the fuck up.

 

So that’s it. That’s Episode 7. We’re finished with the vase falling from the table. It’s a metaphor for something, and the metaphor is war. That’s it. Thank you for listening. Thank you for staying with me on this weird and wonderful journey that we’re going on. As ever, if you’re watching along as well, if you have thoughts, if you have comments, please drop me a line. My tumblr is lemontrash.tumblr.com, or you can pineapple me on my website. I will see you in orbit next time. Bye!

  



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